On the Impeachment Farce: Once Again, The Purloined Letter

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While we could go into detail about the kabuki theater in the House impeachment farce Wednesday (and we do below), it is better to invoke, once again, Edgar Allan Poe’s “Purloined Letter” principle. Both George Kent and William Taylor, who testified, are cold-blooded cold warriors whose views, attitudes, and incompetence threaten the peace of this world. We have posted their résumés on LaRouchePAC’s website along with the absolute evil for which they should be held accountable. But both “sides,” Republicans and Democrats, characterized these résumés as “sterling.” The Democrats, formerly saner on issues of war and peace, played up the Taylor and Kent résumés as if the witnesses were war heroes rather than pin-striped ideologues from a very foggy bottom.

In their opening statements, both presented a completely false picture of a Ukraine, united in battle against a Russian enemy with, they claimed, boots and tanks on the ground. These do not exist. George Kent, the far more characteristic of the two, snarling in his arrogant bow-tied wannabe elite demeanor, went so far as to repeatedly draw analogies between the American Revolution and the British/U.S. coup d’état in Ukraine which installed a government at neo-Nazi bayonet point, a government which then proceeded to conduct an anti-Russian ethnic cleansing in the East of the country, in Donbas.

Kent outrageously mischaracterized the OUN-B participants in the Ukraine coup and the instigators of ethnic cleansing in the Donbas as follows: “They formed volunteer battalions of citizens, including technology professionals and medics. They crowd-sourced funding for their own weapons, body armor, and supplies. They were the 21st century Ukrainian equivalent of our own Minutemen in 1776, buying time for the regular army to reconstitute…. [He is describing here the actual actions of Alexandra and Irena Chalupa and CrowdStrike’s Dmitri Alperovitch in the joint British-American operation known as Digital Maidan and the neo-Nazis they commandeered, such as the Azov Battalion. Rep. Adam Schiff has censored Alexandra Chalupa’s name along with that of the whistleblower out of all of the transcripts of witness testimony.]

“By analogy, the American colonies may not have prevailed against British imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of Lafayette’s organized assistance to General George Washington’s army and Admiral John Paul Jones’ navy, Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine. These funds increase Ukraine’s strength and ability to fight Russian aggression. Ultimately, Ukraine is on a path to become a full security partner of the United States within NATO.”

Kent then went on to defend three of his colleagues who have testified against the President in Adam Schiff’s bunker, former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and Dr. Fiona Hill, against what he said were “personal attacks” directed at them. He stated: “They are the 21st-century heirs of two giants of 20th-century national security who were born abroad: my former professor Zbigniew Brzezinski and his fellow immigrant Henry Kissinger. Like the Brzezinskis and Kissingers, the Yovanovitches and Vindmans fled Nazi and communist oppression to contribute to a more secure America.”

This hyperbolic statement is true and false. Marie Yovanovitch grew up in Canada, her parents having fled the Soviet Union and the Nazis in the wake of World War II. Vindman grew up in Little Odessa, in Brooklyn, his father having immigrated from Soviet Ukraine after his mother’s death. The characterization of their views as echoing the two people who destroyed America’s honor in the world and slaughtered thousands, Brzezinski and Kissinger, is most apt. (Dr. Hill was born and grew up in Great Britain. Kent made no mention of her emigration.)

Finally, Kent said, the purpose of the $1.5 billion in aid to Ukraine proffered by the U.S. Congress over the past five years, Kent said, is meant “ultimately, [to put] Ukraine on a path to become a full security partner of the United States in NATO.” This is the British/State Department position on Ukraine and that of its former puppet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Saner heads in Europe and elsewhere recognize that this provocation may be the final straw for Putin and Russia as NATO expansion puts into questions Russia’s ability to defend itself.

All of the above, critical in any sane assessment of these witnesses, went right past the Congressional interlocutors on the Republican side who stuck to the dumb, stupid partisan pragmatic point that Trump was tougher on Russia in terms of Ukraine than Obama who only provided “meals ready to eat” (MREs) and blankets.

Ambassador Taylor kept detailed notes of all of his interactions with what he referred to as “Trump’s irregular channel,” Giuliani, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, and Ambassador Kurt Volker. But somehow, it was only last Friday, Nov. 8, after this testimony had been on the agenda for months, that a member of Taylor’s staff informed him that he—the staff member with super Vulcan-like ears—had overheard a conversation on a cellphone being conducted between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Sondland. One day after the transcribed Trump-Zelensky call of July 25th, on July 26th, the President was allegedly talking loud enough to be overheard on a cell phone, a cell phone presumably being held to the ear of Ambassador Sondland, asking, if the Ukrainians were going to go forward with the “investigations.” Sondland responded, yes. The staff member with super ears then asked Sondland what the President wanted from Ukraine. Sondland allegedly responded that Trump was more concerned with the Bidens than Ukraine.

“Poof”—this is the creation out of whole cloth which the Democrats and the media are having an orgasm about in the wake of the testimony today. A Quo of sorts to finally answer the so-called Quid, since, as the Republicans repeatedly emphasized, the aid was delivered without any conditions or any investigations of the Bidens or Ukrainian interference in the election. It was also delivered without Ukrainian President Zelensky complaining of any pressure whatsoever. This fabricated piece of nonsense represents a change in legal theory for the Democrats who now are claiming that President Trump attempted but did not complete a bribe. Thought crimes are the province of totalitarian regimes, not our constitutional republic.

Otherwise, Taylor, who is supposed to be a Ukraine expert, confirmed that he did not know about: The January 2017 Politico article which detailed Alexandra Chalupa’s recruitment of Ukrainian intelligence officials, journalists, and private intelligence operatives in activities directed at the Trump campaign; the editorial written by Washington’s Ukrainian Ambassador against candidate Trump; the activities of the State Department-funded Ukrainian anti-corruption bureau, NABU, in the fake Paul Manafort black ledger affair; or the social media activities of several Ukrainian officials attacking candidate Trump. He said that since he appeared in Schiff’s bunker in the House for his Star Chamber initial testimony, he had researched it, and found out that candidate Trump had suggested that he would let Russia stay in Crimea. Taylor seemed largely absent mentally, inviting comparison by many to Robert Mueller’s disastrous July appearance before the same committee.

The Republicans continued to gingerly paint the Taylor and Kent testimony for what it was, the residue of a monumental policy fight as to who sets foreign policy—the President or the life-long unelected experts cultivated by British intelligence. But Rep. Devin Nunes provided a powerful opening statement. The late evening commentary shows that the needle did not apparently move in either direction based on Wednesday’s proceeding.

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