Bill Taylor, a U.S. diplomat, and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee. During Taylor\u2019s opening statement, he said a member of his staff \u201ccould hear President Trump on the phone, asking Ambassador (Gordon) Sondland about \u2018the investigations.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Tipton called that statement \u201chearsay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone overheard the conversation with Sondland and the president and passed on that information,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cWhen you hear one side of the conversation, you can say you overheard. I stand near a lot of people with a lot of cellphones on, and I\u2019m not able to overhear the conversation; only a word or two. So I think there\u2019s speculation in there.\u201d<\/p>\n When looking at the text of the phone call between Trump and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, there was no quid pro quo, Tipton said, because the \u201creality is that no investigation is taking place in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no investigation of the Bidens that was conducted by the Ukrainians, so we did deliver the $400 million in financial aid and we delivered Archer missiles to be able to help protect Ukraine from some of the Russian threats that existed,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cSo what was the impeachable offense?\u201d<\/p>\n Tipton said impeachment charges need to be taken seriously, but ultimately, what it came down to in the hearing was that neither of the witnesses had a direct answer for what the impeachable offense was.<\/p>\n Tipton said his constituents in Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District, and the country as a whole, would like to see more progress with lowering prescription drug prices and passing a trade agreement than impeachment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have no legislation that\u2019s being able to move to the floor,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cWe look at what Congress is not doing in terms of the interest of our district and our country. I think we need to make sure that we\u2019re taking care of the business that people send us here to do.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, there have not been any \u201cbig revelations\u201d throughout the inquiry, Tipton said, and while another public hearing is set to occur Friday, he does not view it as his primary focus.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething that I often hear at home is, \u2018Is Congress getting anything done?\u2019\u201d Tipton said. \u201cIf there is something that can be specifically bullet-pointed to in the hearings, we need to take it seriously, we need to be able to examine it, but at this point, we\u2019re seeing nothing that would rise to the level of an impeachable offense.\u201d<\/p>\n Ayelet Sheffey is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1 of public hearings contained \u2018hearsay,\u2019 U.S. representative says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,1137,28,29,23],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-91689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-u-s-rep-scott-tipton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91689"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=91689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}