Thread by @moscow_project

Today's second hearing, featuring Kurt Volker and Tim Morrison, is about to begin. Watch it live here, and follow along for our live analysis. c-span.org/video/?466377-…

Volker is the first of the "Three Amigos" who ran Trump's shadow Ukraine policy to testify.
We broke down their scheme in detail in this week's episode of @AssetPodcast, "Scheming:" theassetpodcast.org/episode/extort…

@AssetPodcast Morrison's initial response to the July 25 phone call was concern that it could be damaging if anybody saw it—after which the White House took unusual steps to keep it covered up.

@AssetPodcast .@RepAdamSchiff walks through what Volker and Morrison knew, and when they knew it, while they were enacting key parts of Trump's extortion campaign.

It's not just Democrats who say that Zelensky would have a motive for going along with Trump saying he didn't feel any pressure. Multiple witnesses have explained why he would feel he had to play along:

https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1194694447835025410?s=20

Nunes again repeats the lie that the Ukrainians didn't feel pressure from Trump withholding military aid.
They reportedly knew about it as far back as early August—and this morning's witnesses confirmed that it was the first thing on Zelensky's mind:

https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1196813491082014720?s=20

Morrison: "Support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty has been a bipartisan objective since Russia's military invasion in 2014. It must continue to be."

Volker is trying to thread a delicate needle, claiming he didn't know references to Burisma in his conversations with Sondland, Giuliani, etc., had anything to do with the Bidens.
That's hard to believe, given how Giuliani drew the connection in the press. nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/…

Volker outlines two years of progress in Ukraine against both Russia and corruption.
Trump's efforts to extort Ukraine threatened to undermine all of that progress.

Volker says he never saw Giuliani as working directly for the president.
That's not what his text messages show. themoscowproject.org/dispatch/anato…

Volker's full opening statement has been posted. You can read it here: axios.com/kurt-volker-op…

One by one, Volker is walking back the false statements and denials in his initial testimony:

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1196897540576366593

Volker says that he now recognizes that asking for an investigation of Burisma, which would've been "unremarkable," as asking for an investigation into the Bidens, which is "unacceptable."
The question is how he can claim he missed that obvious implication for so long.

Volker is the latest in a long line of officials to testify that Lutsenko's allegations, and Lutsenko himself, are not credible—and that he made it clear to Giuliani.
Giuliani and Trump went right on pushing his allegations regardless.

Not only that, Trump *actively praised* Lutsenko in his July 25 call with Zelensky—right before repeating his request for Zelensky to talk to Rudy Giuliani. whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

Morrison testifies that he was disappointed with Trump's July 25 call specifically *because* Trump and Zelensky didn't discuss Zelensky's anti-corruption reform agenda.

Morrison confirms what Vindman said this morning: Trump's references to CrowdStrike and the Bidens in the July 25 call surprised everybody, because they seemed totally out of step with the policies on which they briefed Trump before the call.

Volker minces no words about the veracity of Trump's allegations: They're conspiracy theories, and neither Ukraine nor the U.S. should be investigating them.

Q: "But you would agree, right, that asking a foreign government to investigate a domestic political rival is inappropriate, would you not?"
A: "It is not what—it is not what we recommended the president discuss."

Morrison claims he only went to the lawyers about the July 25 call because he was concerned about potential political fallout.
You don't go to lawyers with political concerns.
You go with legal concerns.

Volker claims he didn't interpret Trump telling him to "talk to Rudy" as instructions.
So then why did Volker turn around and ... talk to Rudy?
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/timel…

We put Sondland and Volker's texts in context.
Even by themselves, they clearly show how Trump extorted Ukraine.
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/timel…

For someone who didn't take Trump saying to "talk to Rudy" as an instruction, Volker sure spent a lot of time coordinating with Giuliani to get Zelensky to announce investigations into what Volker says he considers conspiracy theories.

Volker says he didn't consider announcing investigations to be a "condition" of getting an Oval Office meeting—but admits that it would be "helpful" and that, absent that statement, Zelensky never got an Oval Office meeting.
That sure sounds like a condition.

Morrison just confirmed a key detail: In his September meeting with Zelensky, Pence helped with Trump's extortion campaign, telling Zelensky about "President Trump's concerns about the state of corruption in Ukraine" and saying the U.S. was "reviewing the assistance."

If Pence's pressure wasn't clear enough, according to Morrison, Sondland immediately pulled one of Zelensky's aides aside and told him "the Ukrainians would have to have the prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations as a condition of having the aid."

Sondland wasn't freelancing: He made sure that Morrison knew he was acting in coordination with Trump, something Morrison earlier claimed he verified.

Goldman walks through the final days of the extortion scheme—culminating on September 11, when public pressure and the whistleblower complaint forced Trump to release the aid before his scheme could come to fruition.

Nunes's new standard of proof: Unless somebody involved described it as bribery or extortion, it wasn't illegal.
That's not how the law works.

According to Volker, Trump opened a May meeting about Ukraine with a screed about how Ukraine was out to get him—a conspiracy theory he picked up from an indicted alleged Russian intel operative.

We traced the lineage of that particular conspiracy theory back to Konstantin Kilimnik, the indicted suspected Russian intel operative with whom Manafort repeatedly shared internal polling data and campaign strategy. themoscowproject.org/dispatch/trump…

Morrison just confirmed that, by the time Pence met with Zelensky, there was no question that Ukraine knew aid was being withheld.
This was in response to the line of questioning meant to *help* Trump.

Morrison and Volker are torpedoing one of Republicans' main talking points, clarifying again and again that, yes, Ukraine knew that the Trump administration was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid.
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/debun…

Volker saying he didn't think of what he was doing as extortion doesn't change the fact that what he was doing was *obviously* extortion
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/anato…

For people who were so intent on rooting out corruption, Trump's people sure seemed to find every way they could to avoid using the actual word.
Some words they did use a lot: "Burisma," "Biden," "2016," "investigate."

Volker is continuing to dance around the obvious implications of the messages he was sending to Ukraine: There was one way to unlock aid and get a White House meeting, and that was to announce the investigations Trump wanted.

Morrison gets caught in a lie: He knew what investigations Sondland was pushing Ukraine to announce on Trump's behalf.

Morrison says that he would consider it inappropriate if Trump asked for investigations into various political figures.
So why does he still say that he only had the July 25 call hidden out of political concerns?

.@RepAdamSchiff: My colleagues asked about well, doesn't aid get held up for all kinds of reasons. Have you ever seen military aid held up because the president wanted his rival investigated?
Volker: No.
Morrison: No.

House Republicans are apparently going all-in on the defense that, since the people involved a) didn't explictly call it extortion and b) said there was no quid pro quo, nobody could have done anything wrong.
That's not how this works.
That's not how any of this works.

Trump's defenders say he just wanted Ukraine to fight corruption.
His advisers wanted him to raise the issue with Zelensky.
So why can't anybody name a single time he did so?

Another GOP rant about the whistleblower, another opportunity to reiterate that the White House has confirmed just about everything in the whistleblower complaint, including the contents of Trump's call with Zelensky and the efforts to hide the records. justsecurity.org/66475/ukraine-…

Volker said earlier that he didn't see Giuliani as speaking for Trump.
So why did he work so hard to coordinate with Giuliani, including connecting him to Ukrainian officials who could deliver his desired investigations, even though they weren't official US policy?

Jordan is once again running down a litany of conspiracy theories about Ukraine being out to get Trump in 2016—the exact same litany Marie Yovanovitch debunked last week.

https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1195402390633156613?s=20

Seven people have testified so far.
None of them—not a single one—outlined anything remotely similar to Jordan's timeline of Trump's decision to release the aid.
What they have confirmed is that the release came right after Congress began investigating. themoscowproject.org/dispatch/debun…

On September 8, Volker, Sondland, and Taylor discussed the Trump administration's decision to withhold aid.
They didn't discuss anti-corruption reforms.
They didn't discuss Ukrainian courts.
They discussed the quid pro quo.
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/timel…

As with so many of House Republicans' conspiracy theories, Wenstrup's claims are hard to parse—but it sure sounds like he's not only claiming that Russia didn't attack the 2016 election but claiming that the entire investigation is an intelligence community "hoax" against Trump.

People Giuliani considers "terrible people:" Serhiy Leshschenko, who reported the "black ledger" on Manafort's work in Ukraine, and Zelensky's top advisers
People Giuliani considers good people: Corrupt former prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, Lev Parnas

Stewart is trying to make Trump's actions sound like typical policy.
Just one problem: Multiple witnesses—including those who have testified today—said Trump's demands actually contradicted and even undermined U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1196845572864516097?s=20

.@RepMikeQuigley catches Volker in one of his most obvious lies: He claims he had no idea "Burisma" was code for "Biden" until the call transcript was released.
A Ukrainian official made that connection *extremely* clear in late August.

@RepMikeQuigley Volker's meager defense appears to be that he was either too incurious—or too incompetent—to connect the obvious dots before him that Trump was demanding investigations of his political opponents for another month.

Stefanik is the latest Republican to argue that, because nobody involved explicitly called what they were doing extortion or a quid pro quo, no wrongdoing could have occurred.
Clearly she hasn't been listening to @AssetPodcast.
theassetpodcast.org/episode/extort…

@AssetPodcast The question Trump's defenders still can't answer: If there was a perfectly good reason for withholding aid from Ukraine, why didn't anybody give an explanation while it was actually happening? (And why has the explanation seemed to change every few days since?)

@AssetPodcast Morrison heard Trump demand that Zelensky investigate Trump's opponents—but didn't even try to follow through.
That's as clear a sign as any that Morrison recognized that what Trump was demanding was wrong—not just bad politically, but potentially illegal as well.

@AssetPodcast According to Trump's defenders, he withheld aid and a White House meeting from Zelensky out of his sincere concern over corruption.
So why has Trump met multiple times with corrupt autocrats like Putin and Erdogan?
Why was he so dead-set on making Zelensky the exception?

@AssetPodcast Volker says Ukrainian officials, like him, didn't connect Burisma and Biden.
That's be news to Zelensky, who, according to the White House, responded to Trump bringing up the Bidens by saying he'd investigate "the company that you mentioned"—which we now know meant Burisma.

@AssetPodcast The record speaks for itself: "Ambassador Sondland and the president were on the same page. They both were working to benefit the president's personal political interest even when that undermined U.S. foreign policy."

@AssetPodcast Morrison confirms that it's inappropriate for a president to demand an investigation into a political rival.
So why does he maintain that his only concern about the July 25 call was that it might look bad politically?

@AssetPodcast .@RepSeanMaloney shows Volker the clear implication of the Trump administration's demands on Ukraine—even if Volker still claims he didn't understand it at the time.

@AssetPodcast @RepSeanMaloney Republicans made a big deal of Vindman supposedly jumping his chain of command by going to the White House's lawyers with his concerns.
They don't seem to be raising the same objections to Morrison's decision to do the same.
Why might that be?

@AssetPodcast @RepSeanMaloney The question Morrison still won't answer: "What concerned you to the point where you wanted them to know what had transpired, that you went directly to legal counsel to inform them?"

@AssetPodcast @RepSeanMaloney .@RepAdamSchiff drills down on the timeline: Zelensky knew aid was being withheld. Zelensky knew he hadn't had an Oval Office meeting. And he knew the president was demanding investigations into his political oppoents.
Those are the components of the extortion scheme.

Nunes apparently still hasn't gotten the memo that extortion, quid pro quo, and bribery are all accurate descriptions of what Trump did.
Thankfully, that was explained very clearly in last week's hearings:

https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1194662806622212100?s=20

.@RepAdamSchiff begins his summary of this afternoon's hearing:

@RepAdamSchiff "Bribery is the conditioning of official acts in exchange for something of value. The official acts we were talking about were with a White House meeting ... the military assistance is even more significant."

@RepAdamSchiff "My Republican colleagues, all they seem to be upset about with this ... their objection is that he got caught! Their objection is someone blew the whistle!"

@RepAdamSchiff "They will need to ask themselves, as we will have to ask ourselves: Are we prepared to accept that a president of the United States can leverage official acts ... to get an investigation of a political rival?"