Top Republicans in the House dismissed the first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump as boring and said they don’t believe any new information emerged that would justify impeaching the president.
They brushed off a key piece of testimony from William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that Democrats said was cause for alarm as mere hearsay. Taylor testified Wednesday that a staffer told him U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said Trump was more interested in investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, than in Ukraine.
“Nope [none of the new information was interesting], and that’s a good thing for us is nothing is new, nothing different the stuff we’ve heard before,” Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill.
“There are no smoking guns, there are no bombshells. And that’s going to continue to be the case,” he said. “I thought today was probably boring for the American people to watch. I bet they tuned out after watching it and I bet they’re less interested in watching Friday’s than they were in watching today.”