New York: Will Hurd is a rarity in today's Republican Party. The congressman from Texas is the only black Republican in the House of Representatives. In a party that has shifted to the right, he is a proud moderate who believes in finding common ground with independent and Democratic voters. He's no fan of Donald Trump.
In an opinion piece last year Hurd, a former undercover intelligence officer, blasted the United States President's refusal to take on Russian President Vladimir Putin over election interference.
Texan Will Hurd was seen as the Republican most likely to support the impeachment of Donald Trump. That’s looking less likely as the process continues.Credit:Bloomberg
And when Trump said four non-white Democratic congresswomen should “go back” to their countries of origin earlier this year, Hurd accused him of being "racist and xenophobic".
When Trump stood on the White House lawn and called on Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden, his potential 2020 opponent, Hurd said it was "terrible".
Although he's only 42, Hurd announced in August that he will not seek re-election next year. Unlike other Republicans in Congress, he doesn't have to worry about losing his job because of a primary challenge from the right.
Given all this, Democrats initially looked at Hurd as the House Republican most likely to join their effort to impeach Trump.
The House Intelligence Committee has questioned several witnesses about inappropriate conduct by President Donald Trump.Credit:AP
Rolling the dice
It's easy to forget what a big gamble Pelosi took in late September when she announced the impeachment investigation into Trump. The facts about Ukraine were still murky. The White House hadn't yet released the transcript of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And the Democrats hadn't yet seen the whistleblower complaint that kickstarted the scandal.
There were fears the impeachment process could blow up in Democrats' faces and drive voters towards Trump. That hasn't happened.
When Pelosi announced the investigation, 38 per cent of Americans supported impeachment and 51 per cent were opposed, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average. As of Friday, that number stood at 46 per cent support and 46 per cent opposition – an eight point turnaround in favour of impeachment.
But while the Democrats' worst fears have not come true, neither have their wildest hopes.
The Ukraine scandal has not transcended the partisan divisions – indeed, the duelling versions of reality – that now define American politics. Neither has it transformed how Americans perceive the President. Trump's average approval rating, 43 per cent, is essentially the same as when Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry.
And while Democratic voters are virtually united that Trump committed an impeachable offence, just one in five Republicans believe that to be true.
Pelosi’s move to commence impeachment proceedings was risky. And it’s still not clear whether it will backfire.Credit:AP
The quid pro quo 'bombshell'
When Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, appeared to testify before the Intelligence Committee on Wednesday (Thursday Australian time) the political class and media in Washington were abuzz with excitement.
The public impeachment hearings started the previous week with testimony from career diplomats William Taylor and George Kent. They testified to their alarm and astonishment at the Trump administration's efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation into Trump's potential 2020 rival Joe Biden.
Then came Marie Yovanovitch, who recounted how she was forced out of her job as the US ambassador to Ukraine by a smear campaign led by the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, testified that the highest levels of the US government were involved in the Ukraine pressure campaign.Credit:Bloomberg
This week Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Vindman, a decorated military veteran responsible for coordinating US policy on Ukraine, expressed his concerns at Trump's "improper" and "inappropriate" behaviour on his July call with Zelensky.
Sondland offered something different to these career diplomats. He was a Trump appointee and had been in regular phone contact with Trump during the period in question. His appearance didn’t disappoint. In his opening statement, Sondland testified that there was a "quid pro quo" linking a White House meeting for Zelensky to an investigation of the Bidens and discredited conspiracy theories about the 2016 elections.
Richard Nixon tried to prevent his legal counsel John Dean from testifying.Credit:AP
Rather than a rogue operation, he also said the pressure campaign came from the very top and involved all the key officials at the top of the administration.
Kenneth Starr, the Republican lawyer who led the investigation into former US president Bill Clinton, described it as "bombshell" evidence.
"This is a John Dean moment," wrote lawyer George Conway, the husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. "It will live forever in American political history.”
Conway was referring to the 1973 Senate testimony of John Dean, the White House lawyer who spectacularly turned against Richard Nixon. His appearance is now widely seen as the beginning of the end of Nixon's presidency. Speaking on CNN this week, Dean said that Sondland's testimony was in the "same spirit" as his. But it was not as devastating for Trump as his was for Nixon. "His statement is not as voluminous as mine was, there’s not as much misconduct," Dean said. "It’s much more restricted."
There are other crucial differences between the two controversies.
Watergate was a slow-drip scandal that took years to reach its crescendo. Dean testified against Nixon in June 1973; Nixon did not resign until August 1974.
In comparison, the Democrats today are moving at lightning speed. They are wary of a long, grinding process that tests the American public's patience and distracts from the presidential election next year. They hope to hold an impeachment vote by Christmas – just a few months after the Ukraine controversy erupted.
Changing minds in a different era
Another difference is the media climate. In the Nixon era, most Americans got their information from newspapers, radio and nightly television broadcasts. Media outlets played to the centre, meaning that Republicans and Democrats could operate with a shared set of facts.
Fox News presenter Sean Hannity has been defending Donald Trump.Credit:AP
Today, the US media is fragmented and highly partisan: progressives and conservatives largely live in their own information bubbles.
"Nixon might have survived if he had Fox News and the conservative media that exists today," Dean told Rolling Stone last year.
While mainstream media outlets focused on Sondland's belief there was a quid pro quo, conservative commentators such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh looked elsewhere. They homed in on Sondland's testimony about a September call in which Trump told him: "I want nothing, I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing."
To Democrats, this was laughable. The call came after Congress was notified about the whistleblower complaint, and they say it's clear Trump was trying to cover his tracks. "It's like being pulled over for speeding and saying 'I didn't rob the bank! I didn't rob the bank!'," Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell said.
But for Hannity and Limbaugh, this was the real bombshell of the day – definitive proof that Trump had done nothing wrong. "We are all being played in a major, major way," Limbaugh told his millions of listeners. "We are all being victimised by an ongoing creation of a grand illusion that the Democrat Party and their cohorts in the media are jointly perpetrating upon us."
As the week's hearings wrapped up on Friday, Hurd used his allotted time to explain his thinking on impeachment. He said he believed Trump's behaviour had been "inappropriate", that he had pursued a "misguided foreign policy" and this was "not how the executive should handle such things".
But he did not believe the conduct met the threshold for "treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanours" outlined in the US Constitution. "An impeachable offence should be compelling, overwhelmingly clear, and unambiguous, and it’s not something to be rushed or taken lightly," he said. "I have not heard evidence proving the President committed bribery or extortion."
The past two weeks of hearings have produced many interesting and important revelations. Bombshells were dropped. There's no evidence, however, that a single mind was changed.
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