Trump’s impeachment hearing fails to find a smoking gun

The first live impeachment hearing on U.S. President Donald Trump over his Ukraine scandal took place on Wednesday (local time), garnering much public attention, but it failed to reach a critical mass in tipping the scale towards impeachment. The witnesses provided testimonies backing the existing allegations, but most of them were already known facts.

The House Intelligence Committee held an open hearing Wednesday in the presence of former Acting Ukraine ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent as witness. “There was an irregular diplomatic channel with Ukraine, which frequently conflicted with the regular one,” explained Taylor. In the regular channel that involved former National Security Advisor John Bolton, there was a testimony that there was no such deal where Trump offered to provide military aid in exchange of an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden.

Former Ambassador Taylor testified that when a staff member asked E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland about President Trump’s thoughts on Ukraine, Sondland answered he is caring more about Biden’s investigation. Kent said the main goal of President Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani’s shadow foreign policy was to dig up political dirt on Trump’s potential rival. However, there was no significant difference with the previous news coverage on the undisclosed impeachment hearings over Trump’s scandal.


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