from the American Spectator:
Impeachment Misfire: William Taylor’s Smokeless Gun
Like all poorly maintained firearms this one may do more harm to Taylor than its target
Since late Tuesday the nation has been deafened by media outlets declaring that diplomat William Taylor provided “damning” congressional testimony involving President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. The New York Times, for example, produced this breathless headline: “Donald Trump’s Quid Pro Quo Is Now a Smoking Gun.” Evidently, the “reporters” responsible for this story failed to read Taylor’s opening statement. It consists almost entirely of hearsay, shows that he wasn’t on the fabled phone call between presidents Trump and Zelensky, and confirms that he was assured by high-ranking Trump administration officials that the president sought no quid pro quo arrangement with Ukraine in exchange for aid:
On September 7, I had a conversation with Mr. [Tim] Morrison [the head of the White House National Security Council’s Eurasia desk] in which he described a phone conversation earlier that day between Ambassador Sondland [the U.S. ambassador to the European Union].… According to Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a “quid pro quo.”
William Taylor is, for the time being at least, the acting United States envoy to Ukraine. The 15-page opening statement he read aloud before taking questions from committee members reveals more about Taylor’s role in the metastasizing administrative state than any offense committed by President Trump. It contains, for example, a considerable amount of kvetching about the way Trump’s administration was managing its relationship with the new Zelensky government: “I found a confusing and unusual arrangement for making U.S. policy towards Ukraine.” Anyone with experience in large bureaucracies will recognize this standard complaint of all such functionaries when faced with change. Taylor is typical of the breed:
On May 28 of this year I met with Secretary Mike Pompeo who asked me to return to Kyiv to lead our embassy in Ukraine.… During my meeting with Secretary Pompeo on May 28, I made clear to him and the others present that if U.S. policy toward Ukraine changed, he would not want me posted there and I could not stay.
