Surprise new impeachment witness is about to blow up Mick Mulvaney and Donald Trump
When the House impeachment inquiry announced yesterday that it had scheduled the OMB’s Mark Sandy to testify this Saturday, Palmer Report explained that this meant he was likely to indeed testify. You don’t schedule someone for a Saturday unless you already know they’re going to show up. Sure enough, the Washington Post is now confirming that Sandy will in fact testify on Saturday. This is huge.
The old adage “follow the money” is oft repeated for a reason. For all the impeachment witnesses who are going to publicly testify about who said and did what, the money trail is what will ultimately prove that Donald Trump and his henchmen held up Ukraine funding while they were demanding that Ukraine smear the Bidens. Mark Sandy is the guy who signed the OMB document delaying the funding for Ukraine – and now he’s 48 hours away from testifying about it.
If Mark Sandy were looking to remain uncooperative, he simply wouldn’t show up. The fact that he’s defying Trump’s order and showing up to testify means that he’s planning to cooperate. So he’s going to talk about who told him to sign the document holding up the money, and why he was told to do it. It’s not difficult to parse that Sandy got the order from his boss Mick Mulvaney, who is the OMB Director in addition to being the Acting White House Chief of Staff.
So why is Mark Sandy breaking ranks and testifying? You’d have to ask him. But it’s his signature on the incriminating document, which means it’s just a matter of time before an increasingly desperate Donald Trump and Mick Mulvaney end up trying to claim that Sandy was somehow carrying out this extortion scandal all on his own. Sandy is better off getting in there and airing out the real truth before he can be scapegoated. After he testifies behind closed doors on Saturday, we can probably expect him to publicly testify sometime next week.
