Analysis
By Matthew Bevan
They attacked their target (though this time they failed to kill him) and fled back to Moscow, leaving a long trail of clear evidence behind them.
There really was no logical explanation for what happened other than the Russian state had attempted to kill a traitor as a warning to others not to betray Vladimir Putin.
And yet the Kremlin and Russian state media spent the following weeks and months trying to blame the British government for the attack.
The foreign secretary at the time, Boris Johnson, succinctly explained what was happening: "This is a classic Russian strategy of trying to conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation," Johnson said.
"They're not fooling anybody anymore," he added.
Today, allies of President Trump in the US Congress are attempting to do the same in the public hearings into the Ukraine scandal.
Ambassador Taylor says it was his understanding based on conversations with other officials that President Trump had demanded Ukraine announce investigations into his political rival Joe Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory alleging Ukraine had framed Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.
Updated
When Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned on the streets of Salisbury in England last year, it quickly became clear what had happened.
In a series of events extremely similar to the assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, two Russian spies flew to England with a bottle full of deadly poison, which could really only have come from Russia.They attacked their target (though this time they failed to kill him) and fled back to Moscow, leaving a long trail of clear evidence behind them.
There really was no logical explanation for what happened other than the Russian state had attempted to kill a traitor as a warning to others not to betray Vladimir Putin.
And yet the Kremlin and Russian state media spent the following weeks and months trying to blame the British government for the attack.
The foreign secretary at the time, Boris Johnson, succinctly explained what was happening: "This is a classic Russian strategy of trying to conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation," Johnson said.
"They're not fooling anybody anymore," he added.
Today, allies of President Trump in the US Congress are attempting to do the same in the public hearings into the Ukraine scandal.
'The President did something wrong'
In the first hearing overnight, two senior State Department officials — Ambassador Bill Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent — have clearly laid out their perspective on what happened.Ambassador Taylor says it was his understanding based on conversations with other officials that President Trump had demanded Ukraine announce investigations into his political rival Joe Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory alleging Ukraine had framed Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.
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Taylor says he understood these were the terms the Trump Administration offered Ukraine if they wanted access to $400 million in military aid for their war against Russia, and if the new President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted a face-to-face photo opportunity with President Trump.
And Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent said that in his assessment, there was no factual basis to the corruption allegations the President wants investigated against Joe Biden and his son.
He also said that the President's actions were not in the national interest.
This story is very simple. Anyone can understand it. A number of officials have testified to it. The President did something wrong.
Yet comments made by Republican committee members barely touched this. They focused instead on creating the haystack of obfuscation.
"For 55 days, there was a delay on sending hard-earned tax dollars to Ukraine. Ernst and Young said one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet," said Republican representative Jim Jordan.
"So our President said 'time-out'. Let's check out this new guy. Let's see if Zelensky's the real deal. This new guy who got elected in April whose party took power in July, let's see if he's been legitimate. So for 55 days we checked him out."
Representative Jordan argued that the security assistance money was held back while the US Government investigated whether Zelensky could be trusted with it.
Except that's not what happened.
We know from hundreds of pages of sworn testimony from Trump-appointed State Department witnesses that the money was held back for political purposes.
Ambassador Gordon Sondland, a major Trump donor and Trump appointee, called it a "quid pro quo".
Whistleblower backed by others
The chief Republican on the committee Devin Nunes also tried to turn the attention of the discussion onto the whistleblower who started this saga."The whistleblower was acknowledged to have a bias against President Trump, and his attorney touted a 'coup' against the President and called for his impeachment just weeks after his election," Nunes said.
"And most egregiously, the staff of Democrats on this committee had direct discussions with the whistleblower before his or her complaint was submitted to the inspector general."
The implication is that the entire process has been corrupted by the whistleblower and his or her attorney Mark Zaid's alleged opposition to President Trump, and discussions with Democrats.
But this is irrelevant. The most consequential claims made by the whistleblower have been backed up by testimony by other witnesses and the transcript of the famous phone call between Trump and Zelensky.
The reality is very simple
President Trump has mysteriously been pushing the three-word slogan "Read The Transcript".
And yet the content of the transcript is not at all favourable to him.
The President clearly asks for investigations into Biden and the 2016 campaign after discussing security assistance for Ukraine.
He said, famously, "I would like you to do us a favour, though".
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes responded to the President's tweets most succinctly: "We did. That's why we opened an impeachment inquiry."
The reality is that the issue at hand is very simple.
The only question is whether Republican senators are willing to support the President despite what he has been shown to have done.
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