YOU be the Judge

                                                    YOU Be the Judge
 
            If you watched the hearings yesterday you saw two lifelong public servants testify as to the facts they know about the Trump/Ukraine Extortion plot.  Clearly, I have a bias on this topic but I will leave it to you to be the judge. 
          The Republican attacks on these men (William Taylor and George Kent) by the Republican attack dogs (Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan) made for interesting television and, aside from a blockbuster revelation about a Trump phone call with Gordon Sondland that we didn’t know about, it played out the way most of us anticipated it would.  The Democrats stuck to their pursuit of the facts of the case and the Republicans were intent on spinning a fantastical web about “second and third hand” sources (which could easily be remedied if the White House would allow all their people with first-hand knowledge testify!). 
      Whatever the case, I did a little research on Wikipedia and will simply present my cherry-picked “resumes” of yesterday’s four principal actors.

                                                                                             William Taylor

• Graduated 5th in a class of 800 at West Point in 1969.  As such, he could have any plum military post.  But he chose . . . 
• Vietnam   18 months with the 101st Airborne 
• He was eligible to return home after serving for one year, but he opted to stay for a further six months.   He earned the Combat Infantryman Badge, a Bronze Star Medal, and Air Medal with 'V' for VALOR for heroism.
• five year assignment as the Special Deputy Defense Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO 
• Special Representative for Donor Assistance in Kabul coordinating U.S. and international assistance to Afghanistan 
• In 2003 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appointed Taylor as the Afghanistan Coordinator at the U.S. Department of State 
• In 2004 Taylor was transferred to Baghdad as Director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office 
• Taylor was nominated by President George W. Bush to be United States ambassador to Ukraine  
• He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 26, 2006, and was sworn in on June 5, 2006. At the time Taylor assumed responsibilities at the embassy it was, with over 650 employees from nine U.S. government departments and agencies, the fifth-largest bilateral mission in Europe.
• A report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of State from 2007 notes that the new ambassador had "taken charge of the embassy in a remarkably effective and positive way," creating, together with Deputy Chief of Mission Sheila Gwaltney, a "formidable team at a mission that has a complex set of goals."

 
                                                                                                  Jim Jordan

•   He obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1986.
•  A two-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion, Jordan won the 1985 and 1986 NCAA championship matches in the 134-pound weight class.
•  Jordan earned a master's degree in education from Ohio State University in Columbus and obtained a J.D. degree from Ohio's Capital University Law School in 2001. He never took the bar examination.
  
• During the 114th Congress, Jordan helped found the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservatives working to "to advance an agenda of limited constitutional government" in Congress.He served as the group's first chairman.
  
• On July 26, 2018, Jordan announced his bid for house speaker following resignation of Paul Ryan, but lost to Kevin McCarthy  
• In a Politico article published October 29, 2017, John Boehner, former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives, stated Jordan as "an asshole". Boehner said, "Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio house and senate."
  
• Jordan, along with Warren Davidson (R., Troy), were the only members of the Ohio Congressional delegation that voted in October 2019 against a bipartisan resolution that passed the House 354-60 condemning President Donald Trump's unilateral withdrawal of U.S. Military forces from Syria  
• Asked by Anderson Cooper in April 2018 whether he had ever heard President Trump tell a lie, Jordan said "I have not" and "nothing comes to mind." He also said, "I don't know that [Mr. Trump has ever] said something wrong that he needs to apologize for."
  
• (Currently claiming “no memory” of ignoring abuse by a sexual predator doctor when he was a coach for the Ohio State University wrestling team.)

 
                                                                                                      George Kent

• an American diplomat serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs since September 4, 2018.
• Kent graduated in 1989 with an A.B. in Russian history and literature from Harvard University. He then earned an M.A. from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1992

• Kent has been in the State Department's foreign service since 1992. He speaks Ukrainian, Russian, and Thai, as well as some Polish, German, and Italian.  His work as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer has included service in Ukraine, Poland, Thailand and Uzbekistan.

• From 1995 to 1997, he was posted in Warsaw, Poland, as an economics officer dealing with trade, environmental, and counter-narcotics issues. Kent was later assigned to serve as deputy political counselor in Kyiv, Ukraine, from 2004 to 2007, which include the time period of the Orange Revolution
  
•  From 2012 to 2014, Kent served as director of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. He served as a senior anti-corruption coordinator in the European bureau in 2014–2015, and as deputy chief of mission in Kyiv, from 2015 to 2018.[

 
                                                                                                      Devin Nunes

• Republican politician and former dairy farmer. 
• In February 2018 Nunes publicly released the Nunes memo, a four-page memorandum alleging a Federal Bureau of Investigation conspiracy against Donald Trump. 
• After receiving his Associate of Arts degree from the College of the Sequoias, Nunes graduated from Cal Poly with a bachelor's degree in agricultural business and a master's degree in agriculture.
• Former Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon has described Nunes as Trump's second-strongest ally in Congress
• Nunes wrote in his book that members of the environmental lobby were "followers of neo-Marxist, socialist, Maoist or Communist ideals"
• In February 2014, during a drought in California, Nunes rejected any link to global warming, saying "Global warming is nonsense.
• Nunes supported President Trump's 2017 executive order imposing a temporary ban on entry into the United States by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, calling it "a common-sense security measure to prevent terror attacks on the homeland"
• In February 2017 Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, was the first leading House Republican to deny that the intelligence community had evidence of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives
• When Trump's national security adviser Michael T. Flynn resigned after it was revealed that he had misled Mike Pence about his communication with Russian officials, Nunes said he would not seek to investigate Flynn's ties to Russia: "From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador—he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it.

 
                I’ll admit to being an “elitist” and  believe getting an education at West Point or Harvard may indicate you have a bit more on the ball than those who go to Cal Poly and Capital University Law School but, beyond that, we have seen Nunes and Jordan in action before and we know that they will do anything to defend Trump.  What stood in high relief yesterday was the unimpeachable integrity of Taylor and Kent.  But that’s just my opinion --- you be the judge.