Don’t Listen To GOP Gaslighting About Morrison’s Testimony
On Thursday, National Security Council Official Tim Morrison, and longtime Republican, corroborated Ambassador Bill Taylor’s testimony that President Trump was involved in a quid pro quo with Ukraine. This has been the key allegation at the core of the House impeachment inquiry, which just passed a historic impeachment procedure resolution.
Morrison told House impeachment investigators that the substance of Taylor’s testimony was correct, although he provided some slight corrections that did not alter the definitive extortion allegation:
In preparation for my appearance today, I reviewed the statement Ambassador Taylor provided this inquiry on October 22, 2019. I can confirm that the substance of his statement, as it relates to conversations he and I had, is accurate.
My recollections differ on two of the details, however. I have a slightly different recollection of my September 1, 2019 conversation with Ambassador [Gordon] Sondland. On page 10 of Ambassador Taylor’s statement, he recounts a conversation I relayed to him regarding Ambassador Sondland’s conversation with Ukrainian Presidential Advisor [Andriy] Yermak.
Ambassador Taylor wrote: “Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that security assistance money would not come until President [Volodymyr] Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.” My recollection is that Ambassador Sondland’s proposal to Mr. Yermak was that it could be sufficient if the new Ukrainian prosecutor general — not President Zelensky — would commit to pursue the Burisma investigation.
I also would like to clarify that I did not meet with the Ukrainian National Security Advisor in his hotel room, as Ambassador Taylor indicated on page 11 of his statement. Instead, an NSC aide and I met with Mr. [Oleksandr] Danyliuk in the hotel’s business center.
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This testimony comes after, this week, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman also confirmed the fact there was a quid pro quo. Morrison was listening to President Trump’s July 25th call with Ukrainian President Zelensky where Trump tried to extort Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election. This is the part of the testimony that Republicans are grasping at. Morrison said that he didn’t think “anything illegal was discussed” during that phone call. Conservative media and Republican lawmakers grasped tightly on that straw, ignoring the fact Morrison corroborated Taylor’s damning testimony about the quid pro quo/extortion.
Morrison’s testimony today is devastating to the false Democrat narrative that anything illegal or improper happened on the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call. It’s also devastating to the credibility of certain other witnesses who have asserted there was anything illegal or improper.
— John Ratcliffe (@RepRatcliffe) October 31, 2019
As mentioned above, Morrison did not contest the substance of Taylor’s testimony, but nevertheless, the GOP gaslighting persists. Just because Morrison claims that he felt nothing illegal happened on the phone call doesn’t manipulate reality and make Trump’s months-long illegal effort to extort the Ukrainian government into investigating his political targets suddenly less illegal, corrupt, or impeachable.
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