Me: Ambassador Taylor, you said that you vigorously advocated to increase aid to Ukraine and provide them with more lethal weaponry during the President Obama's years when Russia invaded. Were your efforts to gain support from Obama successful ?
Taylor: We provided them with training and much needed supplies.
Me: Why are you refusing to say that Obama refused almost all of your requests?
Taylor: Um, er, ah, I, well.
Me: You also said you were encouraged by President Trump's immediate increase in funding and for providing them with the tank-busting Javelins. Was there anything for which you had lobbied Obama that Trump didn't provide the Ukrainians?
Taylor: No.
Me: So in other words, dollar-for-dollar, pound-for-pound, and missile-for missile, Ukraine, in its short history had never had a better friend in the White House than Trump, correct?
Taylor: Well, um, let's see, um.
Me: Why, if Obama granted you none of your requests and Trump granted you all of your requests would you sweep Obama's negligence under the rug and question Trump's loyalty to Ukraine?
Taylor: Um, um, I don't think that's what I was . . . . .
Me: Ambassador Taylor, you hailed the new Ukrainian president for reopening the corruption courts in his country and for promising to leave no stone unturned. Are you aware of the long track record of corruption that follows the company Burisma like a trail of slime?
Taylor: I am aware that there have been many investigations into its alleged corruption.
Me: So you would probably regard the Ukrainian president's reopening an investigation into it as merely a matter of the president following through on his commitment to as you have quoted him "leave no stone unturned," correct?
Taylor: Um, well, if HE had initiated it, then.
Me: Are you aware that Ukraine and America signed a treaty to investigate corruption and share our findings?
Taylor: Yes, I was a part of helping craft that treaty.
Me: Does that treaty say that it is wrong for the Ukrainian officials to investigate companies with long track records of corruption when they hire on their board of directors cokehead sons of American vice presidents who have no experience in the industry and who had never even set foot in Ukraine?
Taylor: No, the treaty doesn't proscribe investigating companies with ties to American politicians.
Me: In fact, the spirit of the treaty is to root out the kind of corruption that makes it profitable to gain favor with political power players, correct?
Taylor: Yes.
Me: is there a more powerful political player in America than the vice president?
Taylor: Perhaps the president himself.
Me: Do you think a prudent president who was concerned about avoiding even appearance of impropriety would have no concern about his vice president's cokehead son sitting on the board of a company that was terribly corrupt, in a country which, as you have asserted, has lots of corruption problems, when we are funding their Russian resistance?
Taylor: I don' think the president knew that . . . .
Me: Vice President Biden has asserted that he didn't even know his son was on the board of that company. How plausible do you think it is that he went golfing in a foursome with his son and two executives from that company and yet they never, as Biden promises, ever talked business?
Taylor: I don't think I should try to reconstruct what was in the vice president's mind when he said those things.
Me: But isn't your testimony here today largely your speculation about what was in the mind of our current president? Several times you have used terms like "I suspected that President Trump," or "I got the impression that what they meant was. . . ."
Me: Mister Ambassador, you said earlier that you were concerned that our foreign policy apparatus was being converted into a political instrument for the 2020 election and you passed along some hear-say that you had heard that the president of Ukraine had said something similar, correct?
Taylor: Yes.
Me: Do you not realize that you are a star witness in impugning the president on behalf of a partisan impeachment inquiry, correct? Do you not realize that you have become the very political tool you say you were concerned about becoming, right?
Taylor: I object!
Me: Well, you, sir, are certainly objectionable. Let me change topics. Did the promised aid, aid which is multiple times greater than the previous president sent to Ukraine, actually get sent to Ukraine nineteen days before the deadline?
Taylor: Yes.
Me: Did the president of Ukraine ever announce opening an investigation into this terribly corrupt company which employed our former vice president's son?
Taylor: No.
Me: How can there be a quid pro quo if there is neither a quid or quo?
Taylor: Well, it is my belief that President Trump tried to withhold those funds until we blew the whistle on him.
Me: Oh, really? I thought you said you were not going to try to guess at what was in the vice president's mind, but you are happy to try to guess what was in Trump's.
You said that we've given them a billion and a half in funds and sold them Javelins cheap since Trump came in office. Why, if, as you agreed, Trump is the best friend in the Oval Office Ukraine has ever had, do you think Trump would reverse his foreign policy position toward Ukraine when it was so obvious that his policy was working and the Ukrainian president was so eager to be seen with Trump in the White House?
Taylor: It just seemed to me that the money was being held up because Trump wanted the investigation opened into Burisma.
Me: You said that you were disturbed as the head of the State Department's official team in Ukraine that there was also an "irregular team" of diplomats authorized to engage in administration policy with Ukraine, correct.
Taylor: Yes, it was most irregular for there to be what is called a shadow campaign.
Me: Mr. Ambassador. I'd like for you to look to your left and right and look at the array of members from the "regular" diplomacy team who are here trying to help get the president impeached. With as many careerist State Department officials who are so eager to tear down this president over suspicion of a quid pro quo that never happened, can you see how it might be reasonable for an administration which cannot trust the loyalty of its State Department team to set up another team made of people it can trust to work alongside one with so storied a history of being hostile to republican administrations?
Taylor: I, um, er.
Me: It seems to me, Mr. Ambassador, that you have a terrible political bias because you have shown yourself to be someone who downplays the terribly negligent policy of the previous democrat administration which denied your very requests, that you are willing to turn a blind eye to obvious corruption of a corrupt company in a corrupt country when it ensnares the democrat vice president in it, you begrudgingly give credit for this republican president's granting all your wishes for aid to Ukraine, and you are trying to tear down this president on your suspicion of him doing something that the actual turn of events show that he didn't do.
It seems to me, Mr. Ambassador, that you are a member of the so-called Deep State and a political hack who will stop at nothing to oust this president because he wants to look into the corruption of democrats and dismantle the Deep State.
I yield back the remainder of my time.