HERE'S THE DEAL
IMPEACHMENT EDITION

A packed week of impeachment testimony ended with two highly-quotable witnesses, Fiona Hill and David Holmes. Hill did something unique among impeachment witnesses: she directly confronted Republicans’ arguments immediately after they spoke.  

Yesterday’s hearing may also have marked the end of all the public testimony in the Ukraine investigation by House Democrats. What happened? Watch our video summary, with extended soundbites. Or keep reading:

Fiona Hill blasts GOP Ukraine theories, Sondland’s role

• Background: Fiona Hill was the senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council staff. She was also a deputy assistant to the president.

• Hill used her opening statement to highlight her immigrant background and her love of the United States. She also railed against Republican theories that the Ukrainian government worked to undermine the 2016 election. She called that a “fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

• She also leveled strong charges at Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, saying he and Rudy Giuliani pushed Ukraine policies that would “blow up” and that Sondland routinely did not coordinate with the professional staff responsible for Ukraine policy.  

• “(Sondland) wasn't coordinating with us because we weren't doing the same thing that he was doing,” she testified. “(Sondland) was being involved in a domestic political errand and we were being involved in national security foreign policy and those two things had just diverged.”

• In an unusual request, Hill asked if she could respond to Republican lawmakers who cast doubt on the process and witnesses as political.  Hill said it is important that staffers like her are apolitical. “We're here to relate to you what we heard, what we saw and what we did,” she said.  “And to be of some help to all of you in really making a very momentous decision here. We are not the people who make that decision.“

Holmes gives first-hand testimony on Yovanovitch and President Trump’s words.

• Background: David Holmes is the political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv.  He works under current acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor.

• Holmes testified that in the spring of this year, Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko began leveling unfounded charges at then-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Holmes told lawmakers Lutsenko did this because Yovanovitch was calling him out for not cracking down on corruption. 

• According to Holmes, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, then helped lead a smear campaign against Yovanovitch.

• Holmes also laid out a series of events immediately following the July 25 call between President Trump and President Zelensky, which initiated  the impeachment inquiry.

• According to Holmes:

  • The day after the call, U.S. officials in Kyiv, including Sondland, met with Zelensky. He repeatedly told them President Trump had raised “sensitive issues” on the call that needed a follow-up at an in-person meeting of the two leaders.

  • Following that meeting, Sondland met with a top aide to Zelensky. According to other witnesses, Sondland told the aide that it was unilkely that Ukraine would get its military assistance funding if it did not launch or announce investigations into the Bidens and 2016 election.

  • Next, Sondland took staff to lunch and from there called President Trump. Holmes says he heard the president ask, “So he’s going to do the investigation?” to which Sondland responded, “He’s gonna do it.” After the phone call with the president ended, Holmes testified that Sondland confirmed that the president “does not give a  (expletive) about Ukraine,” just about “big things” that will help him, like the investigations.

Rep. Will Hurd says he has not seen bribery proven yet

• Hurd, R-Texas, who is retiring from his seat, represents a swing district and who has broken with the president in the past, told the hearing room that he has not heard evidence yet that proves, the president “committed bribery or extortion.”

House Intelligence may be done with public hearings

• Multiple Democratic lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee told NewsHour they do not expect any more public impeachment hearings on their committee.

• The committee could still hold closed-door depositions.

• This means Democrats on the committee would move to writing a report of their findings to present to the House Judiciary Committee. 

• The Judiciary Committee would weigh the evidence and determine whether to draft articles of impeachment.