William Taylor's damning impeachment story
The impeachment hearings have begun. The star witness in the first round was undoubtedly acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, who discussed witnessing President Trump's corruption in that country.
Taylor's testimony was quite long, running to 20 printed pages, and the story he told was somewhat complicated. Nevertheless, the basic through-line is not at all hard to understand. He testified that Trump attempted to blackmail Ukraine into smearing his top political rival, Joe Biden, by withholding military aid.
To start with, when Taylor first took the job, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured him the U.S. policy of supporting Ukraine against Russia — which had straight-up annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine — "would continue and that he would support me in defending that policy." And that was official U.S. policy as carried out through the traditional diplomatic apparatus.
But Taylor gradually discovered a sort of shadow foreign policy, conducted by Trump administration officials through back channels. First, he realized people close to Trump were trying to dangle a meeting between newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump to get Ukraine to investigate the Biden family (through Burisma Holdings, the energy company where Hunter Biden held a board seat) and validate the crackpot conspiracy theory that Democrats framed Russia for meddling in the 2016 election and that some Ukrainians had the evidence. Then Taylor learned that Trump's people were holding up promised military aid as well, for the same reason.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/william-taylor-s-damning-impeachment-story/ar-BBWI2ZP?ocid=msn360
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