Democrats on Tuesday conducted yet another hearing in the impeachment inquiry headed by Rep. Adam Schiff.
It did not go well.
Brad Parscale, the Trump 2020 campaign manager, summed it all up in a brief statement after the dismal day of testimony.
“Democrats structured their whole sham impeachment hearing strategy with Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman as the lynchpin and today it further fell apart. Vindman confirmed that the transcript of the Ukraine phone call is accurate, was forced to admit that the President alone makes U.S. foreign policy, and testified that Burisma was a corrupt company which employed the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden.
“This could not have gone worse for Democrats, and could not have gone better for Americans sick to death of this concocted, bogus circus,” Parscale wrote.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council aide, was the Democrats’ star witness on Tuesday. But he shot holes throughout their own talking points.
Vindman was one of three people on the infamous July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats allege that Trump demanded Zelensky investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, with Ukrainian power company Burisma, then omitted the word from a transcript of the call, which they say White House then hid in a secure server.
Not so, Vindman said.
Vindman testified under oath in Tuesday’s impeachment hearing before the House Intelligence Committee that the omission of the word “Burisma” was not “significant.”
He attributed the omission “to the fact that this transcript being produced may have not caught the word Burisma.”
“It was in the transcript that was released as ‘the company,’ which is accurate,” Vindman testified. “It’s not a significant omission,” he said, later adding: “I didn’t see that as nefarious.” Vindman added that it was “informed speculation that the folks that produce these transcripts do the best they can, and they just didn’t catch the word.”
He also shot down conspiracy theories that the White House moved the call transcript to a secure server to keep it from Democrats.
Again, not so, Vindman said.
Vindman testified Tuesday that storing the transcript in a secure server was not unusual.
“Why would it be put on a separate secure system?” Vindman was asked.
“This is definitely not unprecedented,” he said. “At times, if you want to limit access to a smaller group of folks you put it on the secure system to insure that a smaller group of people with access to the secure system have it.”
