Despite Perry’s insistence that he never mentioned the Bidens to Ukraine officials in his entreaties that they fight “corruption" or heard others bring up the Democratic presidential candidate or his family, NBC News reported that Perry was seen leaving a White House meeting as former State Department official Fiona Hill heard participants discussing Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company that had paid Hunter Biden $50,000 a month. Hill went to that meeting on the orders of her former boss, John Bolton, who broke up a separate meeting because of his objections to [Rudolph] Giuliani’s involvement, The New York Times reported this week.

With that background, I’d like to address Perry directly.

Dear Secretary Perry:

I interviewed you a few times during the 2016 presidential primaries and contrary to the image of a hapless dope set in stone after your “oops” moment in a November 2011 debate, I found you to be serious, without a trace of animus toward immigrants and thoughtful as well as unfailingly decent and kind.

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You delivered a searing indictment of then-candidate Donald Trump that has certainly held up over time. (“He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued. Let no one be mistaken — Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.”)

You also delivered in July 2015 one of the most compelling and honest speeches on race I have heard from a conservative in years:

For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn’t need it to win. But when we gave up trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln. ... Too often, we Republicans, me included, have emphasized our message on the 10th Amendment but not our message on the 14th, an amendment, it bears reminding, that was one of the first great contributions of the Republican Party to American life, second only to the abolition of slavery.

Although you joined the Trump administration, you avoided personal scandal and did not allow the Energy Department to become awash in corruption and self-dealing, as did other departments and agencies. Now you are a critical witness, according to news reports and multiple officials and ex-officials who have already testified at House impeachment hearings. Those witnesses have put you smack in the middle of events in which you were privy to the president’s unethical and impeachable conduct, namely his scheme to hold aid to Ukraine hostage so as to extort political help for his reelection.

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You have the opportunity to place a capstone on your years in public office, to have the one line in history read, “The longest-serving governor in Texas history defied partisan bullying to provide direct evidence of blatantly impeachable conduct, thereby haste to ning the end of the Trump presidency, rescuing the soul of his party and defending the rule of law.”

You have already seen current and former administration figures defy White House efforts to obstruct the investigation. They have amply demonstrated that the White House’s baseless assertions of executive privilege to prevent testimony from eyewitnesses to Trump’s wrongdoing lack teeth. The White House has no ability to punish you for fulfilling your legal obligation to testify.

You are politically astute enough to know that this presidency is in a death spiral. There is no career upside to you in propping it up temporarily. More important, unlike career civil servants, you enjoy respect and moral authority among Republicans. Your testimony will therefore be especially impactful with Republican senators and voters. By refusing to play fast and loose with the facts and by placing country over party, you would contribute mightily to the preservation of our democracy and the task of excising the cancer on conservatism. We pray you choose wisely.

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