Worried about missing the hearings today? Never fear, C-Span is archiving everything!
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The House committees investigating President Trump and Ukraine have scheduled closed-door depositions for David Holmes, an official working at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, and Mark Sandy, an official working in the Office of Management and Budget, later this week, according to a schedule distributed to committee staff and reviewed by Axios.
Why it matters: The depositions signal that the fact-finding phase of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is still not over, despite the first public impeachment hearings kicking off on Wednesday.
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Holmes, the counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, is scheduled to appear on Friday, Nov. 15 at 3 p.m.
- Holmes worked at the embassy under former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who is scheduled to testify publicly in the impeachment hearings on Friday.
- He now works at the embassy with Yovanovitch’s successor, Bill Taylor, who is set to testify Wednesday.
Sandy, the director of national security programs at OMB, was initially scheduled to appear before the committees on Friday, Nov. 8; however, he was a no-show. He is now listed as appearing on Saturday, Nov. 16 at 10 a.m.
- It was not immediately clear as of Wednesday morning why Sandy was put back on the schedule.
Worth noting: It isn’t clear whether Holmes and Sandy have agreed to testify before the committees. The schedule solely reflects that House investigators have requested their appearance.
It would be a huge step forward for the inquiry if a representative from the Office of Budget and Management actually testified. They have stonewalled every request for information on who told them to withhold the aid and why. Will Sandy show up? 
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Cross-posting this here. There’s going to be overlap between these two topics – it’s okay. I needed a place to work-out today’s post in real time publicly.
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Update 8:40A/11:40EST - Amb Taylor implicates Trump - newsworthy
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Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
Pay attention here. So far, Taylor’s testimony has mostly been a restating of what he told investigators privately. But he is now offering what appears to be significant new information.
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Specifically, he said that after his earlier depositions, an aide informed him that they had witnesses a call on July 26 between Trump and Sondland. The staff member could overhear Trump on the phone call asking Sondland about “the investigations.” This was the day after Trump’s call with Zelensky.
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“Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.”
11:30 AM ET
Maggie Haberman
White House Correspondent
That’s newsworthy, Nick.
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FWIW…T of course says he is not watching…but he is retweeting some comments from Rep McCarthy (R-CA)…and as Peter Baker, NYT, said earlier in NYT Live Blog NYT Live Impeachment, T will be able to recount in granular detail what went on.
The White House claimed Trump is not watching the first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry. However, the president just retweeted 10 messages from Republican accounts pushing back against the inquiry, including this one with a clip from the hearing.
Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader)
WATCH: @DevinNunes: “After vowing publicly that impeachment requires bipartisan support, Democrats are pushing impeachment forward without the backing of a single Republican.” pic.twitter.com/KZ22RuByeF
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All of the re-tweets have the feel of his staff doing it; I think he’s watching and not saying anything, or watching with Erdogan. These tweets from his account don’t have the feel of him, and I keep a watch on it daily so tend to recognize his malignant touch. This is all just re-hash.
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I forgot he was visiting. What a weird day.
Also Nadler just did something cool in the House Judiciary Committee. Full mark-up on removing the deadline for the ERA. It’ll go to the full house now.
Yes House Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time. Or at least impeach the president and pass civil rights legislation at the same time. 
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That’s why I have all of those Turkey stories up. I’ve been following that line as well. Totally agreement, this is strange, strange day. The last time Trump tweeted himself seems to be this morning when he was binging Fox and Friends.
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A full-court press for the Dems…
The Impeachment hearings are informative, well-delivered, and adhering to a strong case against the Prez. Rep Schiff doing great…and mentioned Pelosi’s quote about Ben Franklin’s quote " “A republic , if you can keep it.”
And yes, great for Rep Nadler to push up the ERA vote.
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Here comes Republicans with Rep Nunes’ questions to Amb Taylor…trying to refute previous testimony…comments from NYT reporters.
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Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
Nunes is trying to build a case that Ukraine was working closely with Democrats to harm Trump’s campaign in 2016. If true, his thinking goes, Trump is perfectly justified in asking Ukraine’s new government to investigate what happened.
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But it is important to remember Trump did not talk about the Politico story during his call with Zelensky. He did not talk about general cooperation between Democratic and Ukrainian officials. He talked about a debunked conspiracy theory about missing emails and a secret server supposedly in Ukraine that would absolve Russia from election meddling, and by extension, absolve Trump.
12:50 PM ET 
Michael S. Schmidt
Washington Correspondent
Nunes using a backdoor here. He is saying things he wants on the record and then asking Taylor whether he knew about them. Taylor responds by saying he doesn’t know anything about them. Nevertheless, the statements make it into the public.
12:50 PM ET
R’s Castor (lawyer for R’s) want to draw in DOJ’s investigation of the Mueller investigation…by Hunter…but Castor is trying to get Amb. Taylor to comment on what T’s motives might be…
Charlie Savage
Washington Correspondent
This line of inquiry by Castor echoes a line he sought to pursue in the Fiona Hill deposition. In a striking moment, Hill chastised him for conflating the efforts of an individual Ukrainian-American having a meeting at the Ukrainian embassy to raise alarms about Paul Manafort’s ties to the former pro-Russian government in Ukraine with the Russian government’s much broader policy decision to interfere with the 2016 election. Ms. Hill suggested that individual Ukrainian-Americans were also providing such information to Republican campaigns, like those of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, in the primary season. Hill also declared, “It is a fiction that the Ukrainian government was launching an effort to upend our election” and told Mr. Castor that “if you’re also trying to peddle an alternative variation of whether the Ukrainians subverted our election, I don’t want to be part of that, and I will not be part of it.”
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OMFG WTF WTF WTF 
Here’s what T’s group is doing…T himself, trying to fundraise.
Charlie Savage 1:05 EST
Washington Correspondent
Trump’s 2020 campaign sent an email in his name seeking to raise $3 million from “patriots” in the next 24 hours, pegged to the hearing. “The Impeachment Scam hearings begin today! This is a complete Fake Hearing (trial) to interview Never Trumpers and a Pelosi-Schiff SCAM against the Republican Party and me. It’s obvious they hate me, but more importantly, they HATE YOU. The Democrats know they can’t win in 2020, so they want to rip the power from your hands by ERASING your VOTE, ERASING your VOICE, and ERASING your FUTURE! BOTTOM LINE: THIS WITCH HUNT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO PROCEED. The Radical Left and Lamestream Media are just trying to make it hard for TRUE AMERICANS, including YOUR PRESIDENT, to win in 2020. We can’t let them get away with this.”
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On Steve Castor, the GOP counsel.
This is the thing about him that catches my eye:
Castor Has Used the Purported Anonymous Whistleblower’s Name During Depositions
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Yes, what facts will be taken from today’s testimony and how can they be spun.
Castor not doing a great job…just spinning facts out…aka throwing noodles at the wall.
Michael S. Schmidt – NYT Live Blog
Washington Correspondent
The battle to convince Americans to support or oppose impeachment will be won on which side is able to take all these confusing facts and turn them into a story that the average person can understand. Three hours in, the Democrats are doing a better job at that. But there’s a lot more ahead of us today – and in the coming weeks.
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This is exactly what everybody else I am talking to feels like.
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BINGO - when the
irregular channel was going against the intentions of the regular channel.
THAT was the problem.
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Annie Karni
White House Correspondent
“Both channels were interested in having a meeting” between Zelensky and Trump, Taylor says. He says his concern was when the irregular channel was going against the intentions of the regular channel.
1:22 PM ET
Carl Hulse
Chief Washington correspondent
Yes, Peter, Taylor is making it clear that the real problem was the back channel was at odds with the U.S. policy. That is where the conflict comes in.
1:22 PM ET
Michael S. Schmidt
Washington Correspondent
Good point, Peter. It’s highly unusual for one administration to have two actively different, and at times conflicting, approaches to a country. Administrations often have differences to how to deal with a country. But usually an administration has one aim when they put their plan into action.
1:23 PM ET
Maggie Haberman
White House Correspondent
“I was concerned about Rudy Giuliani’s statements and involvement in the Ukraine policy, yes,” Taylor says bluntly.
NYT Live Blog
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Did Castor just try to link the two conspiracy theories together? He literally just tried to state that Burisma AND the theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election were connected. There’s been zero evidence toward that ever!
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explainer
Kenneth Vogel
Money and politics reporter
A reminder of how corruption taints Ukrainian politics, and many involved in it: While George Kent praised Zelensky’s prosecutors today as a departure from the corruption of past Ukrainian prosecutors, American officials once felt similarly about Yuriy Lutsenko, the last prosecutor general. Joe Biden called him “solid at the time” of his appointment. But Lutsenko later came to be widely viewed as corrupt, and this year he began working with Giuliani to push investigations into the Bidens and 2016.
1:28 PM ET
Schiff is cleaning that up…
Carl Hulse
Chief Washington correspondent
Schiff is trying to do some cleanup here to bring the “investigations” back to the Bidens and 2020 — not the Ukrainians in 2016.
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He is, and very well. Thank goodness. I mean, Castor combining the two basically insinuates that the Bidens were involved in hacking the DNC, because that’s the essence of the two conspiracy theories if they were combined. That’s really nuts.
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It’s super nuts 
that the Republicans are fully going with Manafort’s conspiracy theories to defend the President.
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