Dems Pick Up The Pace On Impeachment As Trump's Wall Begins To Crack

NICHOLAS KONRAD / THE NEW YORK TIMES

So far so good. 

Three weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would initiate formal impeachment proceedings, the three House committees spearheading the effort are picking up the pace.  But most importantly, the trickle of Trump administration officials, present and past, willing to defy the president threatens to turn into a flood.  And while Senate Republicans who are publicly aghast over Trump's betrayal of the U.S.'s Kurdish allies in Syria and that Russia has quickly filled the power vacuum left by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal,  there are promising cracks in that wall, as well. 

In stark contrast to the Russia scandal investigation, which stretched over two years, House Democrats are moving fast as the Ukraine scandal grows new tentacles by the day. 

The committees already have taken explosive testimony from Kurt Volker, the State Department's special envoy for Ukraine, abruptly dismissed Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovich; Fiona Hill, Trump's former top Russia expert, and senior State official and Ukraine specialist George Kent, all of whom told damning variations on the same story: Trump, with ample assistance from personal lawyer-fixer Rudy Giuliani and his mobbed-up Ukrainian associates, has weaponized foreign policy. 

That they all were deeply concerned by Trump's shadow diplomacy before his now infamous July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymy but were ignored is a significant turn in the impeachment inquiry.   

Kent further testified he had been told at a May 23 meeting called by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney that he was being pushed aside and should "lay low" because Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Volker and EU ambassador Gordon Sondland were taking over the Ukraine portfolio.  This was such a capital venture that the three began calling themselves the "Three Amigos."    

Central to that shadow diplomacy was an attempt to extort Zelensky into digging dirt on Joe Biden and his son by withholding $400 million in desperately needed military aid to fight Russian aggression in the former Soviet republic, an effort resisted by Yovanovich, whose name Trump didn't even know when he told Zelensky in the July 25 call, that "the former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news."  All he knew is that Giuliani wanted her gone. 

It is extremely important to remember that the Ukraine scandal didn't just happen.   

Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election was directly connected to events in Ukraine in 2014, including the overthrow of a pro-Vladimir Putin president for whom Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort did extensive work, and Russia's invasion of Crimea, which led in part to the crippling U.S. sanctions imposed by the Obama administration that Trump and his surrogates promised but failed to ease when he was "elected." 

These events, in turn, have led to Trump's astonishing claim that there was a "deep state" plot by the FBI, Mueller and the Democratic National Committee in concert with Ukraine to deny him victory in 2016 and Attorney General William Barr's travels to foreign capitals to discredit the Mueller report and bolster Trump's byzantine conspiracy obsessions. 

And you had better believe that he knows Yovanovich's name now.

Among those in the queue to testify before House committees this week in defiance of Trump are Michael McKinley, the now resigned top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Sondland, who bought his ambassador post with a $1 million contribution to Trump's inauguration and whose text messages revealed the Ukraine quid pro quo, and Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense who oversees Russia- and Ukraine-related matters at the Pentagon.  House committees also have issued subpoenas to the White House, Defense Department, budget office and other agencies for documents related to their investigation.

Then there is the intelligence community whistleblower who blew the lid off the Ukraine scandal.  His testimony is uncertain -- and now less urgent because of other testimony -- because of fears he could be put in harm's way if identified by allies of Trump, whose anti-impeachment rhetoric, punctuated by interminable rounds of golf at taxpayers' expense, has been liberally spiced with suggestions that violent things could happen to his perceived enemies. 

But the biggest domino to fall is career partisan John Bolton, whom Trump dismissed as national security adviser after his onetime best buddy objected to the president's go-it-alone foreign adventurism.  

Bolton is not likely to testify.  A deal for a guaranteed bestselling book is more attractive, and Hill ably carried his water in her testimony on Monday.  But Bolton's denunciations, including his description of Giuliani as "a hand grenade who's going to blow everyone up" -- and non-denials when asked about the denunciations -- carry enormous weight in undercutting Trump's house-of-cards defense that shaking down foreign leaders for political gain are within a president's rights. 

"The walls are closing in.  The details we are learning about the shadow foreign policy operation Trump has been running to benefit himself personally are stunning," said Senator Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  "Why have a democracy, if we allow this to happen without consequence?" 

Senate Republicans might ask themselves the same thing.   

Getting at least 20 of the 53 Senate Republicans to join Democrats to vote to convict the president in a Senate trial on House-generated articles of impeachment seems like the longest of long shots, but many if not most of these Republicans fear Trump and are not necessarily loyal to him.   

Far more chaos and corruption has been revealed in the first two weeks of October than any other administration has experienced over eight years in office.   If public opinion continues to run toward impeachment and enough senators' reelection chances are in jeopardy, a few doses of the kind of political courage exhibited by Yovanovich and Hill could go a long way into a quickly turning tide. 

While I continue to waver on whether House Democrats should move beyond the Ukraine scandal and include Trump's other high crimes and misdemeanors in their investigation, that scandal alone represents at least four areas of impeachable conduct.  These include abuse of power for political gain, undermining federal law, obstructing justice and obstructing Congress. 

As the Democrats' whirlwind investigation gains momentum -- with Axios estimating that they will have interviewed 11 administration officials by the end of next week -- Trump gets more panicked and his aides more demoralized.   

And that, we can agree, is not just a good thing in the here and now, but a great thing for the future of America.