Thread by @HoarseWisperer

The Fiona Hill-David Holmes hearing has now resumed.

I will be following along below.

If you missed the first part and are looking to catch up, Part I can be found here:

1/

https://twitter.com/hoarsewisperer/status/1197517155010535426

The afternoon session opens with the Republican minority’s 45-minute block of time for questioning by Nunes and Castor.

Nunes opens by reading off a list of irrelevant names linked to his conspiracy theories...

...the theories Hill testified were Russian propaganda.

2/

The effing asshat, Nunes, kicks it over to the Lightweight Litigator, Steve Castor.

His opening remarks were inscrutable, rambling and without an apparent point.

In other words, he is already in typical form.

Castor asks if Fiona Hill and John Bolton were in agreement on the wisdom of a call between Trump and Zelensky on 7/25.

Hill testifies that neither she nor Bolton were in agreement.

Castor appeared to have thought Bolton felt differently.

Oops.

Castor asks if, at some point, Volker had become more involved in Ukraine policy.

Narrator: Volker was the United States Special Representative for Ukraine. He had no other job, dummy.

Note: I’m listening in my car and pecking on my phone so I’m gonna miss the body language and optics.

Castor now inquiring about Sondland.

Hill testifies Sondland positioned himself as having a big portfolio to “make deals” with European member states.

Castor tries to dismiss that as self-inflation.

Hill says, pretty much, “yeah, but, he said Trump gave him that authority.

I have to say, Hill is so very impressive in both manner and depth, this examination already has the feel of a high school junior trying to cross-examine Gary Kasparov about chess.

This is so lopsided, it amplifies how unimpressive Castor is while doing the reverse for Hill.

Castor, like numerous other Rs, introduces the irrelevant point that the Obama Admin did not approve of the sale of Javelins to Ukraine.

David Holmes guts that argument like a fish by pointing out that the Javelins the Trump Admin provided aren’t actually deployed.

That’s one of the points that has gotten lost in all of this.

Republicans have tried hard to prop up Trump by posturing like the Javelins somehow allowed Ukraine to hold their own on the battlefield.

The Javelins are symbolic and in storage nowhere near the front.

The power of the Javelins isn’t their military value in active use.

The power lies in signaling that American might supports Ukraine in their defense of their sovereignty.

Withholding aid undermined that power.

Nunes interjects to ask inane questions about the Steele Dossier.

If there is such thing as a day of reckoning, this insufferable turd has some misfortune coming down the pike.

Castor now delivering a mealymouthed ramble interrupted by infinite “ummms” about Pence’s alibi for not attending Zelensky’s inauguration.

His prattle is directly contradicted by Jennifer Williams’ testimony that Trump ordered Pence to not attend.

“Do you think the delegation was... umm... a good-sized group?”

“I do... but we don’t try to make these large delegations on the taxpayers’ dime.”

LOL

Paraphrased:

Castor: we sent a lot of people

Hill: yeah, the idea is to send a few important ones not a lot of randos.

Again, this is like watching a toddler try to debate a scholar.

Painfully bad.

Nunes, not one to allow another person to steal the Throne of Idiocy, jumps back in to ask about Burisma.

Asks about Hunter Biden.

Holmes shunts it aside with a deferral to George Kent.

Nunes is trying so very hard to puff up smoke around Burisma and Biden.

With each hearing, these attempts get more and more impotent.

Witnesses testify to ever more damning material on Trump.

Nunes responds with ever smaller questions about random people and events.

Nunes sounds like a pouting teen.

Seriously, I half expect him to say “I’m going to my room AND YOU CANT COME IN.” after these.

It’s almost sad.

Castor now rambling again about “seeing [Sondland] on campus” and “a coffee of some sort”.

Someone mercy-kill this sad display.

Hill now testifying that she had a couple of skirmishes with Sondland.

Politely says, in artful terms, that Sondland claimed she was “emotional” because sexist asses misconstrue a woman’s anger as something different than a man’s.

Dr. Fiona Hill indulges no bullshit.

Then, Hill goes on to say that the subject of the blowup was an attempt to prevent exactly what has now occurred:

Pursuing the personal, domestic agenda for the President at the expense of national interests until it erupted into public view and became a problem.

Hill goes on to say, in retrospect, she had been unfair to Sondland because like her, he was following orders - and the problem was the orders and the people giving them not the sap chasing those rabbits.

Nunes, epic dumbfuck that he is, steps in to make the harebrained mistake of trying to argue with Hill about whether Trump’s zeal for investigations was founded.

Hill chews up that weak effort much in the way one might eat an apple.

These idiots are sooooooo overmatched.

Dr. Hill does not raise her voice but she is blessed with the ability to yell in a whisper.

When Castor or Nunes says something dumb, her tone in response is lacerating. It cuts like a knife... with no change of volume.

I seriously want to tap these guys out for their own survival.

It’s like Rocky’s cornerman, Mickey, when he tries to get Rocky to quit in the face of a beating.

“They’ll kill ya to death, Rock!”

Fellas, you’re getting concussed here.

Yield back. Run.

LOL.

As soon as I posted that, they yielded back.

Schiff picks up control and goes right at my point above.

Jennifer Williams testified Pence skipped the inauguration at Trump’s orders.

Castor misrepresented the facts.

Hill now testifying about the moment in early July when Ukrainian officials visited the White House.

After the meeting broke, Sondland pulled the Ukrainians aside into a conf room - which was unusual. Bolton smelled a rat. Sent Hill to go inject herself.

Upon arrival, she found Sondland talking about investigations and Vindman looking on agog.

Hill shut it down with prejudice, castigated Sondland and scuttled further discussion.

I could entirely see that happening. The goofy Sondland getting cut down by Hill’s biting injection.

Jim Jordan now up.

While he is pissing on his own shoes, I’ll avail myself of the Panera bathroom across the parking lot.

And I’m back.

Jordan randomly shouting.

Tries to yell over Holmes. Schiff shuts him down.

“MR JORDAN, WE WILL HEAR THE WITNESS’ ANSWER.”

Clears the way for Holmes to crap all over Jordan’s nonsense.

It bears repeating in every one of these:

Chairman Schiff is doing an excellent, excellent job.

He is so very much up for the challenge of the moment.

He has been absolutely terrific throughout.

Hill talking about a piece by Ken Vogel back when he was at Politico.

(Note: Vogel is an ass)

The piece helped stir up the artificial talking point that some in Ukraine were actively working against Trump in 2016.

Vogel peddled that conspiracy theory until this scandal broke.

Hill raising an excellent point:

A whole lot of leaders from a whole lot of countries said nasty things about Trump.

Yet, Trump did not look to punish any of them. Only Ukraine.

The same Ukraine Trump claimed “tried to take him down.”

Again, based on debunked propaganda.

The picture of Trump painted here is of a malicious oaf so impressionable and ignorant that his actions as President of the United States are easily shaped by horseshit peddled by bottom-dwellers.

Rep. Ratcliffe now browbeating Holmes over the exact words exchanged on Trump’s call with Sondland.

Ratcliffe’s goal is to sow doubt about Holmes’ playback.

In about ten seconds, a Dem is going to remind Ratcliffe that Sondland talked about the call after hanging up.

Rep. Sewell up now.

Asks about Yovanovitch.

Hill: “I have the highest regard for [Yovanovitch and her work].”

Goes on to say there was no reason to smear her because she could be removed for any reason.

That’s the point though.

There was no reason. The smear was pretext.

Programming note: I’m going to have to drop off sometime in the next 40 mins.

My son is newly focused on getting frequent haircuts. So we have an appointment with a barber’s chair.

Hill now relating the threats, smears and derogatory things being said to and about her online.

Says her personal information and address has been posted online.

Some effing popinjay on the R side picks up that point and laments the mistreatment of...

...Elise Stefanik.

Oh, eff all the way off.

Uhoh. That popinjay is walking into a buzz saw.

This is going to be grisly.

He knows not what he does.

Goes for Hill’s throat about her comment that some on the committee believe Ukraine meddled.

Uhoh. This won’t end well for him.

Oh, that was a missed opportunity.

The asshat filibustered for five minutes without a question.

Expect Schiff to come back to this and let Hill respond...

And if she does, she’ll likely statements BY THE COMMITTEE. DURING. THESE. HEARINGS.

Now up, Rep. Wenstrup.

For the trillionth time, he polishes his own wrinkled prunes by telling everyone that he was in the military.

No one is more impressed with Wenstrup’s service than Wenstrup.

Thank god today is the last of these this week.

Like his colleague before him, Wenstrup prattles on like a goddamned traitor about bullshit without even asking a question.

These scumbags have to go. Every last one.

Traitors. Treasonous traitors.

HERE WE GO!

Hill wants to respond...

“It’s unfortunate Reps Turner and Ratcliffe have left...”

Hill smacks these dumbasses upside their heads.

Basically says “Ya know where I got the idea some of you think Ukraine rather than Russia meddled? From your questions in my deposition.”

Up your ass, boys.

“Hearsay... there are things I have heard with my own ears.”

This is about “what we saw, what we did and what we heard.”

Hill is a scalpel. Razor-edged.

Unbowed by the bullying of men of lesser character.

Rep. Speier asks Hill if an anecdote in the Times today was true.

As a schoolgirl, during a test, a boy in Hill’s class lit one of her pigtails on fire.

Hill snuffed it out with her bare hand and went on with completing her test.

LOL. Dr. Hill is a badass.

Rep. Chris Stewart now up.

Announces he has no questions. Rambles anyway.

They aren’t even trying to question Holmes and Hill.

Man, this has been the saddest spectacle of an already pathetic series of efforts by Republicans.

While Stewart prattles on, true confession time.

I had to run errands during the break. Get gas. Go to the bank. Yadda yadda. I never got those tacos.

I am now officially very, very hungry.

Up now, Rep. Quigley.

Nothing earth-shattering here.

Still left to go: Castro, Swalwell, Demings and Krishnamoorthi.

All have been consistently good.

Might be a notable moment in one or more of those.

Stefanik up now.

She deserves no coverage.

Thus, she will get none.

Swalwell up.

Opens by referencing Trump saying “No quid pro quo.” to Sondland - in September

Leads Hill to remind everyone that Trump’s National Security Counsel attorneys were aware State Department employees were worried about exactly that by early July.

Suggests his answer to Sondland was like a bank robber getting pulled over for speeding and due to his guilty mind over the bank robbery says to the officer “I DIDNT ROB THE BANK.”

Oh, snap!

Swalwell now reading excerpts from a Daily Beast story about how Lev Parnas helped Devin Nunes with his “investigations”.

Says Nunes might be a fact witness if he was working with Giuliani’s indicted henchmen!

Zinnnnnnnnnng.

Swalwell enters into the record a story directly tying Nunes to the low-rent hoods now under indictment.

I. LOVE. IT.

Swalwell in the hizz-ouse!

So pizzazzy.

That scathing charge is going to titillate the scandal-hungry media.

Nunes is gonna get some unwelcome media attention.

Rev it up, Dems. Rev. It. Up.

I have no idea who is up for the Rs. Will Hurd?

Whoever it is, it’s a boring 5-minute floor speech.

I can feel my soul leaving my body.

Rep. Joaquin Castro up.

Opens by calling Rs characterization of this process as “vile, unconscionable and dangerous.”

Goes on to say the most damning words uttered in this matter were the ones uttered by Trump himself.

Now up, Rep. Conaway.

Opens by mispronouncing “Putin” as “Pootin”. As in “Pootin on the Ritz”.

It is not appropriate to judge people for surface-level ephemera such as casual mispronunciations.

Therefore, my pointing out that Conaway is a dope is based on his larger dopiness.

Conaway is talking fast and cramming in a lot of words yet somehow managing to make a grand total of zero cogent points.

He sounds much like I imagine a weasel on meth might sound.

Hyper. Annoying.

Now up, Denny Heck.

Heck asks if Russia would overrun Ukraine if it could.

Holmes: “Absolutely. It has been said ‘without Ukraine, Russia is just a country. With it, it’s an empire.’”

Heck rails against Republican lies and then says:

“Those are the ‘big lies’. Here is the ‘big truth’...

He did it.”

Jim Jordan up now.

Like Stefanik, he deserves no coverage and thus won’t get any.

Maloney up now.

Unfort, I am now down to listening on my phone via the XM app and can’t both listen and type.

Going to get spotty from here.

Maloney asks about Bolton’s reasons for asking Hill to go to the NSC counsel with concerns.

Hill says he wanted to make sure that it was on record that Bolton, Hill and Vindman were not a part of a quid pro quo of a WH mtg in exchange for investigations.

Maloney asks if Hill finds it credible that Sondland was clueless Burisma meant Biden until much later.

Hill: I don’t find credible at all that Sondland was oblivious.

Rep Demings up now.

Asks about Putin and the impact of withholding aid.

Hill testifies that it plays into Putin’s hands as a useful example of the West failing to deliver on its promises. Makes his threats more potent since his regional enemies know he makes good on threats.

We have now completed member questioning.

Nunes and Schiff set to make closing statements.

I’m now in a barber shop, so I’m going to wrap this up here.

Quite the day. More wood on an already burning pyre.

Thanks for following... and thx for the kind support of my taco fund.

Overall, today was another damning day.

The contrast between the conduct of Ds and Rs is just so unbearably sharp.

Republicans on the committee have entirely thrown themselves into the task of lying at all costs to save... Trump.

They have sold their souls.

I know we all know that.

Still, you can’t help but be struck by it in these hearings.

It is just so vulgar. It rises to level of a treason of sorts. A moral treason.

These are representatives bound to a duty by an oath.

And they have abandoned it.

They serve only Trump.

I am buoyed by the constant stream of polls that show Americans aren’t snowed by these daily treasons.

This has never been about the 30% who would follow Trump into hell.

It has always been about the 70% who wouldn’t.

And that’s exactly the percent that thinks he did wrong.

This has been a long, long week.

Thank you for riding along.

I’ve written somewhere around 25,000 words in the past three days’ hearing threads.

That’s half a novel.

I’m tired.

Tonight, we sleep. Tomorrow, we rise again and press on.

Postscript: The Schiff close I missed...

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1197625924218429463?s=21