Mulvaney’s acknowledgment means that things have gone from very, very bad to much, much worse,” Mr. Sondland was still testifying, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney gave a rare press briefing in which he said the administration had frozen nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to pressure it to investigate an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had hacked the 2016 U.S. Trump had rejected the advice of his top diplomats and charged his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, with overseeing American foreign policy on Ukraine. ambassador to the European Union, told House investigators that Mr. So far, the impeachment inquiry has been proceeding with head-spinning speed. “This is a process that will test anybody.” The “unflappable” Adam Schiff is an enormously difficult task,” says Democratic strategist Dan Kanninen. Schiff now carries a huge chunk of that weight. The credibility of the impeachment process, most observers agree, rests on Democrats’ ability to methodically and dispassionately communicate their findings to a deeply partisan American public. Schiff, settling in recent weeks on “Shifty Schiff,” perhaps in an attempt to throw doubt on the congressman’s often pointed observations about the White House in television interviews. Trump has field-tested a number of derogatory nicknames for Mr. They’ve criticized him for misleading the public about his initial contact with the whistleblower – the unidentified member of the intelligence community who first raised questions about the Trump-Zelenskiy call – and more broadly for the secrecy of the investigation so far. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. This week House Republicans, with the president urging them on, took steps toward formally censuring him for his dramatized public retelling of the infamous July 25 call between Mr. But in a process in which credibility is paramount, public perception of integrity and honesty could make all the difference.Īlready, he’s fielding blows. The GOP is trying to censure him for it.ĭemocrats have dismissed the criticism as partisan. Among other things, they point to his loose interpretation of the famous call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president, performed before a House hearing. But the whistleblower who complained of President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine came from the intelligence community, and Representative Schiff has Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s confidence. He hosts an annual comedy fundraiser where he sometimes performs the opening act.Īs chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he’s not the obvious choice to spearhead impeachment. Representative Schiff is a Harvard-trained lawyer who represents Hollywood in the U.S. Adam Schiff of California got that role and how he’s done so far. He wasn’t the obvious choice to become the leading face of the Democratic-led House impeachment inquiry. Moral clarity and human decency are both needed for societies to move from strife toward healing. I’ll be encouraging them to follow the story closely and get a better grasp of the complex forces at work. “The defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” said special counsel Jack Smith.Moreover, strong stands can sometimes descend into dehumanizing: What are “those people” thinking? Do Germans want to understand why many Americans continue to support Mr. Yet it’s important to remember this is a legal case, and it is by no means certain what the outcome will be. Mild rebukes are often the same as tacit acceptance. Any attempt to overthrow a legitimate democratic election should be addressed with clarity and conviction. The certainty of black and white fades into shades of gray.This can be good and bad. Problems that seem simple in other countries often feel much more complicated at home. I’ve noticed this from Germany to Afghanistan. It is always easier to be categorical about someone else’s country. Watergate and every other scandal pale in comparison.”That’s strong meat. Here are a few choice words from a commentary in today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine, arguably the country’s leading daily newspaper:“Anyone who hasn’t become jaded three years after the storming of the Capitol and hasn’t written off America as a beacon of democracy will have their blood run cold when reading this document-packed description of Trump’s election fraud attempts. The easy answer is they are fairly appalled. President Donald Trump?There is an easy answer and a somewhat more complicated one. (See last Thursday’s Daily for details.) In a Monitor meeting this morning came the obvious question: What do people in Germany think about the indictment of former U.S. As many of you know, I have arrived in Berlin and will be living in Germany for the next year.
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