For weeks now, I have been pushing the message on my weekly Election Wire newsletter (sign up here!) that the White House’s current impeachment defense strategy is misguided. Rather than focus on the procedural and semantical debate over whether a “quid pro quo” took place on the impeachment inquiry’s underlying Jury 25th phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, I have argued that it would be far preferable for the White House to defend the underlying substance of the phone call as failing to rise to the Constitution’s impeachment criteria.
Following U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s testimony today in front of the House Intelligence Committee, I feel vindicated. After all, Sondland’s testimony today focused disproportionately — perhaps nearly exclusively — on the question of whether a “quid pro quo” took place when Trump broached the subject of investigating the corrupt nexus of the Bidens and troubled Ukrainian energy company Burisma in the context of doling out fresh U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine.
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