Not a good look, GOP

Taylor's testimony yesterday really sent the GOP into a panic.

A group of Republican members of the House of Representatives, chanting “Let us in”, barged into a secure, in-camera hearing room in the bowels of the US capitol where Laura Cooper, a top Pentagon official who oversees Ukraine policy, was due to testify before the committees in charge of the inquiry.

The chaos and confusion temporarily shut down the proceedings as Republicans tweeted live updates of the disruption from their cellphones, which are not typically permitted in classified areas. Their presence in the chamber reportedly erupted into yelling matches with committee members.

“BREAKING: I led over 30 of my colleagues into the SCIF where Adam Schiff is holding secret impeachment depositions. Still inside – more details to come,” tweeted Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican congressman and one of Donald Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, referring to secured areas of the Capitol known as Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs, and Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee leading the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry.

  Guardian

The Republicans who led the protest do not sit on the three committees involved in the impeachment inquiry and are not permitted to attend. Members of those committees already include Republican members of Congress, as well as Democrats, and both parties attend and ask questions at the hearings, whether public or, as in this case, closed to the public and the press.

[...]

The invading Republicans remained in the hearing room into the early afternoon and even ordered pizza.

“Reporting from Adam Schiff’s secret chamber,” Republican congressman Andy Biggs began, in a series of tweets from inside the room. Biggs has accused Democrats of conducting a “Soviet-style” impeachment inquiry and demanded the testimony be made available to all lawmakers.

“When Republican members were in the SCIF, Chairman Schiff immediately left with the witness,” he tweeted. Biggs later clarified that he had “transmitted” to aides for publication, as the use of electronic devices in the secure area violates security protocols.

Obviously they don't give a shit.

More than five hours after the standoff began, committee members were recalled to the room and Cooper’s deposition began. Democrats were furious. “This is a stunt that corresponded very specifically to the president’s complaint that they weren’t fighting hard enough for him, and in direct response to devastating testimony yesterday from Ambassador Taylor,” Democratic congressman David Cicilline, a member of the House foreign affairs committee, told reporters.

[...]

Meanwhile a report emerged noting that as early as 7 May the newly elected Zelenskiy told senior aides he was already worried about pressure from the Trump to investigate his Democratic rivals.

Zelenskiy’s group of advisers spent most of a three-hour meeting talking about how to navigate the insistence from Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for such an investigation, and how to avoid becoming entangled in the American elections, according to three people familiar with the details of the meeting.

Microphones and cameras.






1)  We're not supposed to know who whistleblowers are.  They're supposed to be protected.
2)  Why isn't the @GOPoversight Twitter person better educated?  "Being ran."
3)  It's not secret.  It's closed to the public as many hearings are and have been for ages.  It's being attended by Republicans who are involved in the questioning of witnesses.
4)  The American peopole will be enlightened when the investigation is complete, articles of impeachment have been drawn up, and the Senate holds the trial.

The Republicans know all this.  They're desperate.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  It's worse.

UPDATE:  And still worse:



UPDATE:

Cooper was also the first Defense Department witness to defy a directive not to testify, a sign that Trump’s blockade of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has continued to erode. Several senior State Department officials and a former National Security Council official have already taken the same route.

  Politico