Years ago, a friend in the public relations business shared with me his approach to dealing with journalists. “You don’t have to give them what they want,” he said confidently. “Just give them something they can use.”
The trick-of-the-trade insight came back as I watched Rep. Adam Schiff savor Wednesday’s hearing. Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony didn’t give Schiff everything he wanted, but did give him something he can use.
“The veneer has been torn away,” Schiff crowed to reporters during a break. Later, he added: “This is a seminal moment in our investigation.”
He’s right in one sense — the secret depositions over many weeks and the first three public hearings were duds in terms of making even a weak case for impeachment. Hours and hours and hours of testimony didn’t give rabid Dems anything they could remotely use as a club to drive President Trump from office.
Indeed, the first three days of public testimony were so dreary and inconclusive that, for the first time, I wondered whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be able to deliver 218 votes for impeachment.
That changed Wednesday, which was easily the Dems’ best day. Schiff and Pelosi now have something to work with as they try to erase the 2016 election.
Granted, it’s not much, for the gift came with a huge caveat. Sondland’s key testimony, regarding a quid pro quo, provides ammunition to both sides and there are contradictions and weaknesses that undermine Dem efforts to make it decisive.
Most importantly, Sondland repeated his recollection that Trump explicitly told him he wanted no quid pro quo from Ukraine. This is a powerful piece of exculpatory evidence, which is why Trump repeated it Wednesday as he left the White House.
The day’s big events started when Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, insisted that the president set up strict conditions for meeting the new Ukrainian president. The ambassador told lawmakers that President Volodymyr Zelensky would get an Oval Office visit only when he publicly promised to investigate Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election and Burisma, the corrupt energy company that put Hunter Biden on its board for at least $50,000 a month while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.
Schiff has been desperate to get something like this, and he broke down the testimony in an effort to portray it as a high crime and misdemeanor. He said Trump, in asking Ukraine for the investigations, was demanding “a thing of value” in exchange “for an official act,” the White House meeting.
There’s more than one rub here. Is America going to support removing a duly elected president over failing to hold a meeting? Aren’t there almost always demands made in exchange for foreign aid? Isn’t that an extremely weak excuse for imposing the political death penalty?
The questions underscore what Sondland didn’t give. Schiff wanted him to say that Trump also temporarily withheld $400 million in aid to Ukraine on the same conditions, but Sondland wouldn’t go there, saying he presumed that was true but no one ever said that to him and he had no evidence otherwise.
Even that, I believe, would be a weak case in the context of the facts that Republicans kept hammering home. Namely, Zelensky and Trump met at the United Nation in September and Ukraine got the aid without promising the investigations. And Trump released the transcript of their call, which the Justice Department said involved no wrongdoing.
In addition, Zelensky and others in his government have said they never felt “pressured” or “bullied” to do anything in exchange for a visit or the aid.
But the real rain on the Dem parade is that Sondland repeated testimony he gave in a deposition regarding a brief phone call with the president last September. “What do you want from Ukraine?” he remembers asking.
“I want nothing, I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo,” he said Trump answered. “I just want Zelensky to do what is right, to do what he ran on,” meaning cleaning up corruption.
Republicans cited that call numerous times to highlight its importance. Jim Jordan of Ohio also reminded viewers that two senators, one Democrat and one Republican, visited Zelensky before the aid was released and agreed there were no complaints about being pressured to investigate.
Dems have tried to thwart that line by effectively charging Zelensky with lying out of fear of Trump. Try proving that.
At any rate, the outlines of the first impeachment articles are now taking shape.
The first could be a charge of bribery growing out of the quid pro quo claim. The second would be contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed witnesses and documents, and the third would be some charge of obstruction or witness intimidation.
Separately and together, they’re not much, and it’s hard to imagine that voters would pressure some 20 Senate Republicans to support conviction and removal in a trial. But for Dems, that’s not necessarily fatal.
They now have a pathway to charges they can pass, which they didn’t have before. And even assuming they fail in the Senate, impeachment can be their campaign platform in 2020.
It’s not all they wanted, but it’s something they can use.