I’m going to do kind of a live update here while I’m reading the Volker deposition to give my impressions of it as things hit me. This won’t be particularly organized, and will be more of a stream of consciousness.
12:55am
My preliminary thought in early reading is that this guy thinks he basically did nothing wrong. His opening statement talks about how great he was doing in his job, his service, etc. and how he was working for free (Jlawok.gif). He says he was not forced to resign, and that Pompeo was, in fact, disappointed he was resigning, due to the difficulty of replacing him (yeah, it will be hard to get someone to do this level of criminal work on behalf of the president slickly). He also said that he was not ‘told’ not to testify despite the letter Pompeo wrote a few days before his testimony. He also said he didn’t feel there was any pressure on State Department employees to tow any lines (lol). The only reason he said he resigned was because he felt he would no longer be effective in his role. It’s important to note that he is clearly implicated in the text messages, and it’s mind boggling that he’s trying to roll with the ‘this is all cool’ defense.
I’ve pulled out what I believe are three subtle exchanges that deserve more notice than they’ll probably get. Roughly 43 pages into this thing, he refuses to implicate the President, refuses to say he understood that the investigations were related to the Bidens, etc. He says that Giuliani was pushing these things (claims ignorance about Bidens), but is unwilling to say that this must have come at the direction of the president. He appears to be going with the college football coach cheating defense. He feels if no one told him something directly, it must not have been going on. The problem, of course, is those text messages.
Page 26:
Q: When did you first become aware of efforts by the President of the United States to try to instigate investigations by the Ukraine into a company called Burisma holdings?
A: By —
Q: I’m sorry. Burisma Holdings.
A: Burisma, yeah.
I became aware of the President’s interest in — well, let me take that back.
I don’t recall ever hearing that the President was interested in investigating Burisma. I became aware of the President being interested in investigations concerning Vice President Biden and his son on September 25th when the transcript of the phone call came out.
Nice backtrack there, Volker. GJGE. This guy loves referring to news reports as his source of information in the early reading.
Page 35:
Q: Did the President ever withhold a meeting with President Zelensky until the Ukrainians committed to investigating those allegations?
A: We had a difficult time scheduling a bilateral meeting between President Zelensky and President Trump.
Q: Ambassador Volker, that was a yes-or-no question.
A: Well, if I — can your repeat the question then?
Q: Sure. Did President Trump ever withhold a meeting with President Zelensky or delay a meeting with President Zelensky until the Ukrainians committed to investigate the allegations that you just described concerning the 2016 Presidential election?
A: The answer to the question is no, if you want a yes-or-no answer. But the reason the answer is no is we did have difficulty scheduling a meeting, but there was no linkage like that.
Narrator: There absolutely was a linkage like that.
He has his diplomatic tap dancing shoes on here, and clearly knows more than he’s letting on. I guess he wasn’t expecting others to be so open about what was going on.
A final interesting tidbit to the first update is this, that will pretty much land with no one that isn’t paying attention.
Page 39:
Q: To your knowledge, has a new prosecutor general been appointed by President Zelensky or the Ukrainian Parliament?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know that person’s name?
A: Yes. This is a tough one. Ryabshapka. And R-y-a-b-s-h-a-p-k-a. That’s my best guess.
Q: And I’m not even going to attempt it, so I’ll just ask you, do you know approximately when the new prosecutor general was appointed?
A: Approximately September 2nd to 5th timeframe, somewhere in that range, I believe.
Q: Do you know whether the new prosecutor general has opened an investigation into what you called the first allegation?
A: No, I don’t.
Q: Do you know whether he has opened an investigation or reopened an investigation into Burisma holdings –
A: No, I don’t.
What’s interesting about this is the meeting between Pence and Zelenskyy, and all the drama that happened in Poland on September 1. One of the allegations in the whole thing is that the Trump team was trying to install particular people into Zelenskyy’s government. The timing here would suggest that this prosecutor general was one of those choices as part of the extortion racket. This is probably a good investigative thread for someone to pick up to find out more about this person. There is obviously no info out about whether this person actually has started an investigation.
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