One maxim has become crystal clear over the past several weeks of the impeachment hearings: Even if Republicans are perfectly willing to turn their backs on the oath they took to uphold the U.S. Constitution, many career public servants are not.
On Tuesday, a fourth career public servant stepped forward to testify in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump's extortion of Ukraine. Deputy assistant Secretary of State George Kent did so despite being directed by the Trump administration not to cooperate with the inquiry, as did former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch last Friday, the career diplomat who became the target of a Trump-Giuliani smear campaign. In both cases, House Democrats ultimately subpoenaed both individuals. But make no mistake: Yovanovitch's steely resolve in the face of the White House's blanket declaration to obstruct the inquiry was nothing short of heroic. She was the first duty-bound defector still working within the administration to testify in what has clearly turned into a steady stream of public servants placing their oaths of office to defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, over blind loyalty to the occupant of the Oval Office. Former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker also dealt a blow to the administration after the State Department attempted to block his testimony, but he had already resigned his post by the time he sat for questioning.
Fiona Hill, former Trump national security adviser on Russia, also planted her flag in the sand on the side of the Constitution Monday with her roughly 10 hours of testimony. Hill resigned the week before Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Democrats subpoenaed her as a matter of course, given the White House's consistent efforts to block testimony. But Hill's attorneys also penned a letter Sunday arguing that executive privilege doesn't apply when potential government misconduct is involved.
"We understand that deliberative process privilege 'disappears altogether when there is any reason to believe government misconduct occurred,'" wrote Hill attorney Lee Wolosky, adding that lawyers with the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel have "largely agreed that executive privilege operates differently in the context of an impeachment inquiry."
The letter served several purposes at once, including establishing an overarching rationale for Hill and those who might come after her to sideline any privilege claim by Team Trump on the way to providing full candor to House investigators. Other National Security Council staffers who were reportedly on the July 25 call and might be called to testify will now have a roadmap for a legal rationale to fully cooperate with the inquiry. Additionally, the letter established that, in Hill's view, potential misconduct may have occurred.
Ultimately, every public servant who has stepped forward thus far has dealt a blow to Trump's defense.
The tranche of texts provided to Congress by Volker were de facto inculpatory, detailing the efforts by Trump's allies to pressure Ukraine into investigating Trump's political rivals. Yovanovitch, who Democrats described as having the utmost integrity, released written testimony that both demonstrated her fidelity to serving the interests of the American people abroad and charged that Rudy Giuliani and his henchmen had targeted her because they “believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.” Hill, likewise, praised Yovanovitch and said her boss, former national security adviser John Bolton, compared Giuliani to a "hand grenade" regarding his deleterious role in U.S. foreign policy and instructed her to alert White House lawyers about his scheme. Democratic Rep. Denny Heck of Washington later called Hill's testimony the "most substantive" he had seen in his seven years as a lawmaker, "and that's over thousands of hours of testimony," he added. According to Heck, Hill has a near-photographic memory—particularly bad news for Trump.
More crucial testimony is on tap from public servants, some of whom may prove more helpful than others. Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who resigned over treatment of Yovanovitch, is set to testify Wednesday. Top Trump donor and U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland is also expected to be deposed Thursday after initially declining to cooperate with the inquiry. Deputy assistant secretary of defense Laura Cooper is also expected to testify.
But the montage that is emerging through the collective testimony of public servants from their various vantage points is an absolutely damning portrait of malfeasance by Trump and his coterie of crooks—with Rudy Giuliani chief among them. Their testimony and firsthand knowledge of events is indeed so consistent and conclusive that it has practically rendered the account of the original whistleblower irrelevant, even as Trump flails wildly to defame that person as his main line of defense. Even House Republicans have had to adjust their barbs. Following Volker’s initial testimony, they rushed to microphones to claim his testimony had "undercut" the case for impeachment. Two weeks later, Republicans have lost that argument entirely. Now the entirety of their criticism is aimed on process critiques, in particular, that Democrats haven't taken a full House vote on impeachment (stay tuned), and witnesses aren't testifying publicly (testimony that will likely come when the time is right).
But what is perhaps most striking about this display of patriotic duty by career professionals is what it says about the craven politics of GOP lawmakers. A clutch of people who have spent their entire careers happily serving the American public mostly outside of the limelight have willingly sacrificed that anonymity at this fraught moment in history in order to uphold their oaths of office. Meanwhile, Republicans on the Hill have spent the last several years sidelining their oaths of office in service of protecting their own careers while building the monster who now sits in the Oval Office.
The ability for these brave public servants to fulfill their duties was also made possible by the Democratic caucus finally fulfilling its own pledge to the country. It's an if you build it, they will come type of moment. Democrats helped create the right conditions—and career public servants have stepped up to the plate.