| | | I don't remember anyone testifying that they were directed or pressured into wrongdoing and then resigned because of the pressure.
I don't know of any such testimony. I did not claim that there was testimony. I doubt that it would have occurred. The resignations I heard mentioned were quiet, unceremonious. Since they were quiet, I do not know for sure that they even happened, only that they were said to have happened. All I know happened was that the folks whose job it was to implement what GAO called illegal balked and messaged up the chain that they had reservations about the legality. The matter was handled by inserting a political appointee who would officially make the determination so a squeamish civil servant wouldn't have to. Being familiar with that sort of thing, I tried to flesh such a scenario out so you might understand their perspective.
We had this same conversation a while back wrt the FBI where I tried to explain how things would look from their angle so that you might find a bit of understanding if not empathy. Apparently didn't work then. Don't expect it to work now.
What I saw was a clubby bunch of people who regarded their president as an interloper and not their commander-in-chief.
We have had this conversation before, too, but I will try one more time.
I can understand why you might make the above statement. It was quite the perfect statement, really. I can easily see how it might look that way to you. Now, let's see if I can get you to understand how what you see might legitimately look very different to them.
First, take a look at Lev Parnas and think about what you would do if you found the likes of him skulking about in your neighborhood. You'd get on the phone to the neighborhood watch if not the cops. That "clubby bunch of people" is the earnest federal bureaucracy. It is vast and rule bound and has a culture. Its world works the way it works. Things are done the way they are done. Everyone coordinates everything. Everyone gets to chop on everything. Further, this particular part of the bureaucracy, much like the FBI, which we discussed earlier, has national security responsibilities.
Can you get out of your narrative long enough to hypothetically put yourself in their place?
I'm going to once again differentiate between an "interloper" and a "commander-in-chief."
Consider how, in nature, hives react to interlopers. You should not be surprised by how a federal bureaucracy, particularly one with national security responsibilities, would react to an interloper.
But, you say, this is not an interloper but the commander-in-chief. We have had this conversation before. How would the hive recognize a commander-in-chief? The commander-in-chief would come in the front door. He would stand authoritatively, put his thumbs in his belt, and announce that there's a new sheriff in town and that things will be done differently. Here's how we will do things going forward. Did that happen? No. Nobody in the chain of command told you that anything was different, ergo nothing is different.
In the bureaucracy there are roles and responsibilities and authorities. Everything is coordinated with other agencies, various task forces, clients, whomever. There is a complicated network. Nobody skulks. Skulking would be perceived at a visceral level because things just wouldn't feel right. There would be a buzz in the air. Anybody actually seen skulking would be flagged as an interloper.
So, you're with the State Department in Ukraine, a frontier place with spies and enemies and assorted unsavory characters, and where your antennae are always up. You get wind of some Americans in your midst but they're not acting like Americans. American visitors would not be interacting with the Ukrainian government and American functionaries would have been cleared through standard State Dept processes. So, who are these guys? Are they really here? How does this happen? What's going on? What? Someone suggested that they might represent the commander-in-chief? No, that couldn't be. We would have gotten an XYZ form. Ergo, they must be intruders. Our duty is to protect the country from them.
And that's the difference between an intruder and an official representative of the commander-in-chief.
It turns out that they did represent the president, not in his role as commander-in-chief but in his role as candidate, hence the skulking. They were working a side deal. There are protocols for how to treat the commander-in-chief. The president in the role of intruder is a black swan. No way to grasp let alone anticipate that. |
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