Democrats’ optimism over the impeachment inquiry public hearings got a bit of a reality check late Thursday following testimony of several high profile witnesses who offered further damning allegations of the president’s bribery and extortion scheme the compromised national security for his own political gain.
And while it still seemed like Donald Trump was all but guaranteed to be impeached, one Congressman, in particular, seemed to all but confirm that the president would not be removed from office. The comments from Texas Rep. Will Hurd, the only Black Republican member of the House of Representatives, were being blamed for playing both sides of the political fence that condemned as well as absolved Trump for his admitted quid pro quo.
Hurd spoke after hours of revealing testimony from Dr. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council adviser on Russia, and David Holmes, a state department aide in Ukraine, which Trump threatened to withhold financial aid from unless it opened investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his family’s ties to the eastern European country. The working logic is that Trump wanted the investigation in order to smear Biden’s campaign as a means to gain political leverage ahead of and into the 2020 general election.