Devin Nunes kicked off the highly-anticipated testimony of Gordon Sondland by comparing the president to George Washington. “The Democrats fake outrage that President Trump used his own channel to communicate with Ukraine,” Nunes said in his opening statement. “I’ll remind my friends on the other side of the aisle that our first president, George Washington, directed his own diplomatic channels to secure a treaty with Great Britain.” He added, helpfully, “If my Democratic colleagues were around in 1794, they’d probably want to impeach him, too.”

Nunes appeared to be referring to the Jay Treaty, which Washington signed in 1794, and which was negotiated by John Jay at the behest of Washington. Granted, Washington didn’t exploit his office to solicit a foreign smear on one of his political rivals. But the point of Nunes’ comparison was less to be historically accurate and more to telegraph his all-out support for Trump and his willingness to sacrifice the little dignity he has left to defend him.

Warning the European Union ambassador that Democrats on the committee would spend the day smearing him, Nunes appeared to believe that Sondland’s testimony would support the president’s cause. He was in for a rude awakening moments later when Sondland gave his own opening statement, which said in no uncertain terms that Trump was not concerned with corruption in Ukraine, as the president and some of his defenders have claimed, but with Volodymyr Zelensky publicly announcing probes into the Bidens and a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election—regardless of whether or not they actually carried out those investigations. Sondland also laid waste to Trump’s “no quid pro quo” claims, making it clear that Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine and a White House visit for Zelensky would be contingent on the investigations Trump and Giuliani were seeking. “We were playing the hand we were dealt,” Sondland said of himself and others who helped do Trump’s dirty work in Ukraine. “We had no desire to set any conditions on the Ukrainians.”

Not to be cowed, after a morning break, Nunes continued his single-minded line of questioning, nothing that he would use his allotted time to discuss how Ukraine “supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. He did not address Sondland’s remarks condemning the president and Rudy Giuliani, but perhaps that’s because he left the room for a significant portion of the testimony.

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