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/QPFC[(TKFC[COsRO26 scripts were released.
But now the public will
see and hear them for the
first time. Two highly re-
garded diplomats, William
B. Taylor Jr. and George
Kent, will try to turn the
Ukraine saga into a
straightforward narrative
that Americans can under-
stand.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff
(D-Burbank), who will lead
the hearing as chairman of
the House Intelligence
Committee, will ask them
whether Trump’s actions
damaged or endangered
U.S. national security given
bipartisan support for the
struggling democracy as it
battles Russian-backed
insurgents.
They will say yes, and
explain why. That’s why
Schiff made them the lead
witnesses.
If Schiff and other Demo-
crats can convince viewers
— or at least those who
haven’t already made up
their minds — that Trump
blocked Ukraine’s military
aid to serve his 2020 reelec-
tion campaign, they’ll be
halfway to their goal.
If the last few weeks are
any guide, the president’s
defenders will try to deflect
or discredit the damaging
narrative. That’s their goal.
And they’ll complain about
the process, often a tell
when you can’t win on the
substance.
They may try to side-
track the proceedings by
demanding that Hunter
Biden, who landed a dubi-
ous $50,000-a-month job
with a Ukrainian gas com-
pany, be hauled into the
dock. Most voters will recog-
nize that as an attempt to
change the subject.
If Trump’s defenders are
smart, they won’t waste
much time claiming that theThe public
impeachment
hearings that
start today
have been
ballyhooed as
the greatest
threat to
President
Trump since
... well, since special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III testi-
fied before Congress in July.
We all know how that
ended. Mueller refused even
to read from his own report.
These hearings won’t
produce that kind of belly
flop. But they are unlikely to
lead to Trump’s removal
from office.
The proceedings will be
invaluable, however, if they
help Congress and the
public answer two critical
questions and bring co-
herence to a convoluted
story.
First, how many rules of
statecraft did Trump break
when he asked Ukraine’s
president to investigate Joe
Biden and the Democratic
Party after Trump had
blocked U.S. military aid the
country desperately
needed?
And second, does
Trump’s not-so-subtle
attempt at extortion justify
his impeachment and re-
moval from office?
The first hearing is
aimed mainly at laying out
Trump’s actions and inten-
tions. What Congress
should do about it, which is
harder to answer, comes
later.
Unless you’ve plugged
your ears to avoid the news,
don’t expect dramatic reve-
lations. The first two wit-
nesses already testified to
the committee behind
closed doors, and the tran-president wasn’t demand-
ing a quid pro quo from
Ukraine; the record on that
is too clear.
Instead, they’ll try to
buttress their fallback posi-
tions.
They’ll ask whether
corruption in Ukraine was a
valid concern for U.S. offi-
cials — and both Taylor
and Kent will affirm that
yes, corruption was a prob-
lem.
That will be intended as
groundwork for the argu-
ment that Trump was con-
cerned about corruption
generally, not the Demo-
crats in particular.
Republicans may also
seek evidence that the
Ukrainians didn’t know that
Trump was blocking the
nearly $400 million in securi-
ty aid, so it couldn’t have
been part of a quid pro quo.
But the evidence is
mixed on when the Ukraini-
ans got wind of the problem.
And it’s a curious defense
because it boils down to
this: Yes, Trump tried to use
U.S. aid as leverage to boost
his political campaign, but
only for a short time — and
he stopped when he got
caught.
Notice something about
those defense arguments?
They don’t really deny the
facts of the case.
Instead, they head
toward dismissing Demo-
crats’ concerns as unimpor-
tant — or, more to the point,
unimpeachable. It’s not
about the facts. It’s about
value judgments.
In that way, Trump’s
impeachment is starting to
look like President Clinton’s
in 1998. Democrats didn’t
really deny that Clinton had
lied about an affair with an
intern. They said, in effect,
so what?
Trump clearly did whathe’s accused of doing. The
White House memorandum
of Trump’s July 25 phone
call with Ukraine’s leader
shows he asked for an inves-
tigation of Biden and Demo-
crats in response to a re-
quest for military help. The
question is whether the
public decides his misdeeds
mean he’s got to go.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-
Ohio), who would be a juror
if the House impeaches the
president and the case
moves to the Senate for
trial, has staked out a mid-
dle ground.
“The president should
not have raised the Biden
issue, period. It’s not appro-
priate for a president to
engage a foreign govern-
ment in an investigation of a
political opponent,” Port-
man said recently. But, he
added, “I don’t view it as an
impeachable offense.”
He hasn’t said why. But
at least his position is more
coherent than that of one of
Trump’s most ardent de-
fenders, Sen. Lindsey Gra-
ham (R-S.C.): “I made my
mind up. There’s nothing
there.”
They’re both tiptoeing
around the harder ques-
tions.
Did Trump’s conduct
add up to Alexander Hamil-
ton’s definition of an im-
peachable offense, “the
abuse or violation of some
public trust?”
Or what George Mason,
the great conservative
leader of the time, described
as “attempts to subvert the
Constitution?”
Let’s hope this week’s
hearings, and the debate
that follows, provide more
conclusive answers than
Mueller did.McManus’ column appears
on Sunday and Wednesday.LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
IF HOUSEIntelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats can convince viewers that
President Trump blocked Ukraine’s military aid to help his campaign, they will be halfway to their goal.Win McNameeGetty ImagesImpeachment hearings 101
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