Schiff paints a picture of presidential abuse of power as Nunes slams Democrats' 'Watergate fantasies'

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), its top Republican, painted opposing pictures of the purpose of the hearing of former Ukrainian ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, in their opening statements Friday. Yovanovitch appeared before the committee in the second public hearing in the impeachment process to date; she had previously spoken to the lawmakers behind closed doors.

The ousting of Yovanovitch by President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, "helped set the stage for an irregular channel" that allowed the president to pursue "the 2016 conspiracy theory and most important, an investigation into the 2020 political opponent he apparently feared most, Joe Biden," Schiff said. "And the president's scheme might have worked but for the fact that the man who would succeed Ambassador Yovanovitch, whom we heard from on Wednesday, Acting Ambassador [William] Taylor, would eventually discover the effort to press Ukraine into conducting these investigations, and would push back. But for the fact, also, that someone blew the whistle."

Nunes, by contrast, set the stage for Republicans to tiptoe around Yovanovitch; rather than reference her directly, he painted Friday's hearing as another of the Democrats' "Watergate fantasies" and "daylong TV spectacles, instead of solving the problems we were all sent to Washington to address." In fact, the only mention of Yovanovitch in Nunes' opening statement at all was in the title, Bloomberg's Steven Dennis noted.

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Instead, Nunes pivoted attention to what he described as an effort to "topple a duly elected president," and muddied the waters with "three crucial questions" that re-framed conspiratorial conservative talking points concerning Hunter Biden, Ukrainian election meddling, and Democrats' alleged coordination with the whistleblower, despite such claims having been repeatedly disproved.