RUTHFULLY YOURS

As of this writing it looks like the impeachment farce in the Senate may end as early as tomorrow. The Democrats’ “more witnesses” gambit appears to be fizzling out — although that is not a certainty until the vote is taken. I suppose that ending this thing is for the better. However, I do have a couple of reasons why having it continue for at least a little while longer may not be so bad.

The first is that there is an obvious witness for the President’s side to call, someone whose testimony could be the first real “bombshell” in this whole matter. No, it is not Joe or Hunter Biden. I have seen the Bidens mentioned dozens of times as potential witnesses to be called by the President, and it doesn’t make any sense to me. As indefensible as the Bidens’ conduct in Ukraine may be, calling them as witnesses would likely turn into a net negative for the President. As a general matter, if you can avoid it, you never want to call a well-prepared hostile witness who is devoted to defeating your case. When you start questioning such witnesses, they will almost certainly follow the strategy of ignoring whatever questions you may ask and delivering pre-prepared self-serving monologues justifying their own position. Rarely will a judge give you any meaningful relief to get the testimony focused on what you want.

The President’s counsel calling Joe or Hunter Biden would be like the House managers seeking to call the President himself, or somebody like William Barr or Mike Pompeo. Those people are just not going to say anything unfavorable to the President if they can possibly avoid it. Instead you call people like Alexander Vindman and Marie Yovanovich. People who think that their stellar performance in office has been ignored. Even better, people (like Yovanovich) who have been fired by your target, and maybe have also been insulted by your target and have a powerful motive to use their testimony to get revenge.

Who is the person that the President can call who is most analogous to these star witnesses for the Democrats? Obviously, Viktor Shokin. He’s the former Ukrainian chief prosecutor who was investigating Burisma in early 2016, at which time he got fired at the specific demand of Joe Biden, backed by the threat of withholding some $1 billion of U.S. loan guarantees for Ukraine. We don’t know what Shokin may have uncovered about Hunter Biden and Burisma before he got fired, but it’s almost certain that he has multiple good pieces of information to spill.

And it seems that Shokin is chomping at the bit to tell his story. Just on Tuesday of this week Shokin filed a Complaint in Ukrainian court accusing Joe Biden of a crime under Ukraine law in effecting the firing. The Complaint in the original (and an English translation) is available at the French site les-crises.fr. (Apparently a private citizen can institute a criminal proceeding in Ukraine, unlike here.) A few excerpts from Shokin’s Complaint:

During the period 2014-2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was conducting a preliminary investigation into a series of serious crimes committed by the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Mykola Zlotchevsky and by the managers of the company “Burisma Holding Limited “(Cyprus), the board of directors of which included, among others, Hunter Biden, son of Joseph Biden, then vice-president of the United States of America. . . .  Owing to my firm position on the above-mentioned cases regarding their prompt and objective investigation, which should have resulted in the arrest and the indictment of the guilty parties, Joseph Biden developed a firmly hostile attitude towards me. . . .  Due to continued pressure from the Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden to oust me from the job by blackmailing the allocation of financial assistance, I, as the man who places the State interests above my personal interests, I agreed to abandon the post of Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

After my resignation caused by illegal pressure, no active investigation into the offenses concerning the company “Burisma Holding Limited” (Cyprus) was carried out and, therefore, the persons implicated in these offenses were not identified, nor arrested or charged.

The people at Les Crises have also compiled some collections of video interviews of other Ukrainian witnesses which can be found at their ancillary website ukrainegate.info. For example, there is an interview with a guy named Renat Kouzmine, identified as Associate Prosecutor General of Ukraine 2006-14, with the following quote:

Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, hired Hunter Biden with the sole goal of putting pressure on the Ukrainian authorities to force them to stop the judicial investigation of Burisma.

That’s 44 seconds into their 9 minute condensed version of the results of their Ukrainegate investigation, found here. How about calling Kouzmine as a witness as well? The great thing about friendly witnesses like these is that they can be prepared to testify by their own counsel, who then tell you how it went, and by the time they take the stand you know exactly what they are going to say.

Oh, there is also a second reason why it might not be such a bad thing for the impeachment trial to continue for a while longer. That is that, as long as the trial continues, the Senate is tied up and the Congress can’t accomplish anything else. Congress is a constant source of bad and destructive ideas. Current bad ideas floating around include various health care meddlings and brand new “carbon taxes” supposedly intended to “save the planet.” For the moment, those things aren’t getting a minute of Senate time, and nobody is taking any heat for squelching them either. It’s a win, win.