Thankfully the fact-finding portion of the impeachment hearings is over. What a lot of information that was to process! If you’re still confused about when everything happened regarding Ukraine (and who could blame you), here’s a great timeline that you can filter to just look at key events, details, or the whole shebang. So you can look at a simple overview or get into all the muddy details.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending December 1…

General Happenings:

1. After two weeks of testimony, at least one quid pro quo is clear: Trump invited Ukraine President Zelensky to the White House for a meeting at a date TBD, and then Trump’s aides repeatedly told Ukraine officials that the meeting would happen if they announced investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 elections.

• • The second quid pro quo is muddier. It’s not clear when Ukraine knew that military aid was being held up, and even State Department officials seem confused by it.
  • But if it was on the up and up, why did the White House review turn up hundreds of emails and documents seeking to justify and rationalize withholding the aid during the month after the White House became aware of the whistleblower complaint? Withholding foreign aid approved by Congress is a big deal, and should’ve had some rationale before the fact.

2. Documents show that the hold on military aid to Ukraine was placed at the beginning of July, and agencies were notified on July 18.
3. Here’s a bit of timeline gleaned from the White House review of Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine:

• • Soon after the whistleblower made the complaint on August 12, the White House Counsel’s office learned of it.
  • Just days after that, Mick Mulvaney asks OMB for a legal rationale for withholding aid and also asks how long they can delay the aid.
  • They continued to struggle to come up with a legal rationale for withholding aid for weeks.
  • So six weeks after the aid was withheld, they still didn’t have a justification for it. Remember, the DOD had months ago approved the aid, saying that Ukraine had taken adequate steps to reduce corruption.
  • Whatever they did come up with, they didn’t share with top officials.

4. A federal judge orders the Department of Defense and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to release records regarding the freeze in military aid to Ukraine. This is the result of a FOIA request. We should see them starting next week. The judge says:

• • “Only an informed electorate can develop its opinions and persuasively petition its elected officials to act in ways which further the aims of those opinions.”

5. Mike Pence seems to be the only U.S. official to tell Zelensky the aid was being conditioned on rooting out corruption. Other officials either didn’t know what to tell him or told him that aid was conditioned on the announcement of the investigations.
6. White House lawyers informed Trump about the whistleblower complaint in late August. It was September 7 or 9 that he and Sondland allegedly had a phone call where Trump said there was no quid pro quo (so Trump was aware of the quid pro quo accusation by then). House committees opened their investigations on September 9. Trump released the aid on September 11.
7. The Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has already released two reports from their nearly three-year-long investigation detailing Russia’s efforts to infiltrate our elections and to use disinformation to sow discord. As part of this investigation, the committee chair says that the committee also examined campaign coordination with foreign interference—by either the Trump or Clinton campaign. Their findings on this aspect of the investigation are still being written up but should help clarify any actions by Ukraine in the 2016 elections.
8. While Giuliani was in Spain on his not-so-secret Ukraine mission, he stayed at the estate of Venezuelan energy executive Alejandro Betancourt López. López hired Giuliani to help him out with a DOJ investigation over money laundering and bribery. Giuliani later represented López before DOJ lawyers.
9. In an interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump:

• • Denies that he sent Giuliani to Ukraine (contradicting himself, Giuliani, and about a dozen government officials)
  • Repeats the Fox-News-spawned theory that Democrats don’t want to call it “Thanksgiving” anymore
  • Says he has a 96% approval rating with Republicans (it’s high, but it’s not that high)

10. Trump’s denial about Giuliani leads some legal minds to wonder if Trump just accidentally waived his attorney-client privilege with Giuliani.
11. Three women say they reported allegations of sexual misconduct by Ambassador Gordon Sondland from a decade or more ago. They say they experienced workplace retaliations after making their reports. Sondland, of course, denies the allegations.
12. The impeachment hearings haven’t seemed to budge many public opinions on whether Trump committed an impeachable offense. In fairness, people who aren’t engaged in politics aren’t paying attention for the most part, and people don’t want to sort through the misinformation to get to the information.
13. The White House sends a letter to the House Judiciary Committee saying that, now that they have the chance to appear to defend themselves in the impeachment hearings, they won’t participate in the committee’s first inquiry. In fairness, Trump is scheduled to be at a NATO summit that day, but his lawyers could certainly appear in his place.

• • Here’s my takeaway from the letter his lawyers sent: “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”
  • Also, were Trump or his lawyers to appear, it would lend credence to the proceedings, which they don’t want to do.

Transcripts Released:

The House releases two additional transcripts from closed-door depositions. Same caveat as previous weeks: I haven’t read every word of every page because there is just too much. I do verify what I’m reading about the transcripts, and have at least skimmed most of them.

Mark Sandy:

Mark Sandy, a career OMB official, provided his deposition just over a week ago, and now the House releases his transcript. Sandy is the only OMB official to agree to testify so far. Here are some highlights:

1. It wasn’t until months after the hold on military aid was put in place that the White House told Sandy’s office that it was over concerns about the contributions being made by other countries. By this time, the White House already knew about the whistleblower complaint.
2. OMB officials resigned over the holdup on aid. Or, more likely, the holdup was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
3. The reason for the hold was an open question at OMB throughout July and August.
4. He was responsible for signing off on the holdup in aid. He expressed his concerns about the legality of the hold at the time, but then a political appointee at the OMB, Michael Duffey, took over.
5. Sandy said he was made aware of Trump’s interest in Ukraine in June, when Trump wanted more info about the aid package after he saw a news report on Ukraine.
6. Sandy and other OMB staffers sent Duffey a memo in early August recommending the release of Ukraine funds because it was a national security issue.
7. Just a reminder that Mulvaney gave three reasons for the holdup because apparently, they couldn’t settle on just one: “I was involved with the process by which the money was held up temporarily, OK? Three issues for that: the corruption of the country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice.”

Philip Reeker:

Philip Reeker is a State Department official whose testimony provides insight into State Department efforts to defend U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch from the unfounded smears coming from Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman, and certain Ukraine officials.

1. On March 21, he issued a “stern demarche” to Ukraine’s embassy in Washington saying it “was unacceptable, to have Government of Ukraine figures maligning our Ambassador in this way.” A demarche is a diplomatic message of concern.
2. One of the Ukraine officials he was referencing was Yuriy Lutsenko, who once alleged that Yovanovitch had given him a “do not prosecute” list, which he later recanted.
3. Reeker dismissed the notion that some U.S. officials didn’t know Burisma meant the Bidens (I think he’s looking at you, Volker and Morrison), because Giuliani was talking about it and the press was writing about it all the time.
4. Wow. When he talked to the Undersecretary of State David Hale about defending Yovanovitch, Hale said that Yovanovitch should “reaffirm her loyalty as an ambassador” to Trump and the Constitution. He said this of a 33-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service who, by all accounts, has served admirably and taken on several hardship posts.
5. Fox News hosts, specifically Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, helped spread the unfounded allegations against Yovanovitch.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani… And Now Nunes:

1. Lev Parnas says that he, Giuliani, reporter John Solomon, and Devin Nunes (or sometimes Derek Harvey, one of Nunes’ aides) met at the Trump Hotel in Washington multiple times a week.

• • Solomon is known for his reporting on Ukraine, specifically repeating the conspiracy theories about them meddling in our elections, the black ledger, and the smears against former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
  • Attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing sometimes came to the meetings. They’re frequent guests on Fox News.
  • One of Solomon’s sources in Ukraine was the former general prosecutor Lutsenko, but Lutsenko has since recanted the things he said about former ambassador Yovanovitch and the Bidens.
  • Solomon confirmed that he attended the meetings, but said that he was only there as a journalist.
  • Nunes based a lot of his investigation on Solomon’s writings. Now, Solomon no longer works for The Hill, and The Hill is reviewing his work. They published him under “Opinion” though, so they aren’t obligated to make sure his work is factual.
  • State Department official George Kent testified that Solomon’s work is largely non-truths and non-sequiturs, if not fully made up.

2. Two of Nunes’ staffers at the House Intelligence Committee had planned a trip to Ukraine to find more information, but they later canceled the trip and did a web conference instead after they found out they’d have to report their trip to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.
3. Parnas alleges that Nunes met with “corrupt” Ukraine officials, including meeting with former prosecutor general Viktor Shokin in Vienna last year. Shokin is the guy that Biden worked to oust.

• • Nunes decries the story as false, though he doesn’t outright deny that he did it. He threatens to sue both CNN and the Daily Beast for reporting on it. (He’s a big suer of media outlets, but not a successful one.)
  • Shokin also denies the meeting.
  • If any of this is true, it’s easy to see why Nunes doesn’t want to move forward on impeachment.

4. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan issues subpoenas for information on Giuliani’s consulting firm. The charges listed in the subpoenas include money laundering, obstruction of justice, and campaign finance violations.
5. Giuliani says he has no business in Ukraine, but it turns out he was negotiating personal business with Ukraine’s (now former) prosecutor general Lutsenko at the same time he was asking Lutsenko to open investigations into the Bidens. A draft retainer shows that Giuliani was going to charge Lutsenko a $200,000 retainer fee.

How Are Republicans Defending This?

Here are a bunch of justifications Republicans have floated for Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine. They’ve evolved as more information has come out, and GOP politicians have floated multiple contradictory excuses simultaneously. Here they are, so you can keep them straight.

1. 1. It’s all hearsay
   2. The whistleblower has a political bias
   3. The complaint is inaccurate
   4. The deep state is behind it
   5. There’s no due process
   6. The process is secret
   7. Trump didn’t mean it
   8. Ukraine didn’t agree to anything
   9. Ukraine said there was no quid pro quo
   10. Ukraine didn’t know about the aid being withheld
   11. Ukraine ultimately got the aid
   12. Ukraine is out to get Trump
   13. There was no quid pro quo
   14. There was a quid pro quo, but it wasn’t corrupt
   15. Trump wasn’t aware of what Giuliani was doing
   16. There are always contingencies in these transactions
   17. Trump was just expressing his opinion
   18. The call with Zelensky was appropriate
   19. The call was inappropriate but not impeachable
   20. Trump is incapable of a quid pro quo (that was Lindsey Graham, who also said Trump was too incompetent to collude with Russia)
   21. Democrats just want to impeach
   22. Trump never conditioned the aid
   23. It’s the media’s fault
   24. Impeachment is a coup (thank you, Minority Leader McCarthy)