Mercifully, the first two weeks of impeachment hearings are in the books.

(See Impeachment Hearing UPDATE Blog: Fiona Hill and David Holmes Edition)

These things have amounted to a huge waste of time with a few relevant facts sprinkled in every couple of days or so. In the end, the only witness who actually had anything to add that approached moving the ball was Gordon Sondland, and he would end up contradicting and equivocating many of his most “bombshell” moments.

Today, we got to hear from Fiona Hill and David Holmes. The former is a Trump appointee (another staffing mistake by the President) who mirrored many of Marie Yovanovitch’s complaints, i.e. that there was an “unofficial” foreign policy being run. The assertion is ridiculous on it’s face, as it’s the President who gets to assign whoever he wants to carry out his foreign policy. When Barack Obama fired every political ambassador on day one and put a failed author and noted know-nothing like Ben Rhodes in charge of much of his foreign  policy, I don’t remember any crying sessions in Congress about it. Weird, right?

But most of this impeachment inquiry has boiled down to bureaucrats being upset that Donald Trump changed a few things. David Holmes also came across as arrived, vindictive individual out to make a name for himself. He gave a 30 minute opening statement for a testimony which was seeking his thoughts on overhearing a three minute phone conversation.

He's been talking for nearly half an hour about a 5 minute phone call.

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 21, 2019

Meanwhile, Fiona Hill opened her testimony by making a patently false claim about Ukrainian interference.

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1197494644097142784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1197494644097142784&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fbonchie%2F2019%2F11%2F21%2Fimpeachment-hearing-update-blog-fiona-hill-david-holmes-edition%2F

You can see my article on this earlier today for the full breakdown, but suffice it to say, there is ample evidence the Ukrainians, both publicly and privately, sought to interfere in 2016 to defeat Donald Trump.

That ridiculous assertion by Hill drew a sharp rebuke from Devin Nunes, who pointed out that his committee not only acknowledged Russian interference, but that they also wrote the definitive report on it.

WATCH: Devin Nunes destroys Fiona Hill's bizarre false claim about Republicans denying Russian meddling in the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/nRkD80GtYS

— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 & get the APP (@TrumpWarRoom) November 21, 2019

Another interesting note was Hill calling the Steele dossier misinformation. On its surface, that might seem like she’s scoring some points for Republicans. In reality, it’s a very sly way of sidestepping the misconduct of Americans in the creation and dissemination of the dossier.

Sure, it's possible that there is Russian disinformation in the dossier. But the dossier itself is not a Russian disinfo operation. It's a Hillary Clinton/DNC/Obama IC operation.

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) November 21, 2019

Hill also was very careful not to call out Schiff, nor any other Democrat for spreading the falsehoods of the Steele dossier (some to this day). It’s also noteworthy that Hill once worked for George Soros, so she certainly has the appearance of harboring bias on many of these topics.

Meanwhile, David Holmes provided nothing of value except getting destroyed by Rep. Ratcliffe. He was reduced to a stammering mess, unable to recall anything except his farcical tale about overhearing a phone call mentioning investigations specifically into Joe Biden.

David Holmes perfectly represents the smug, elitist, unaccountable bureaucrat who believes he's both morally & intellectually superior to anyone he's encountered. Ratcliffe, in just a few minutes, completely detonated his credibility & badly exposed him.https://t.co/pxA7U0UvuH

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) November 21, 2019

Here’s Jim Jordan closing things out by pointing out how stupid this all is.

It’s sad what the Democrats are putting our country through. pic.twitter.com/cbl0fN7AmZ

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 21, 2019

As I said yesterday, Gordon Sondland was Adam Schiff’s best shot. He either has enough to impeach or he doesn’t. None of these other pointless witnesses are adding anything to the equation.

Actually, I take that back. Schiff has managed to expose many of the figures who have been working against Trump’s agenda behind the scenes. If the President manages to win a second term, he has to absolutely clean house. Every single one of these people has got to go. It should have happened in 2016 and it was the biggest mistake of Trump’s Presidency to allow so many establishment figures into these jobs. I understand the logistical issues he had, but it’d have been better to leave these positions unfilled.

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