VIDEO: CNN’s Toobin, Sciutto says Republicans are ‘making up facts’ on impeachment when their own facts are WRONG

In a segment this morning on CNN, senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin actually accused Republicans of making stuff up in yesterday’s debate and said that Democrats were the ones giving ‘actual facts’:

Via Newsbusters, here’s what Toobin said:

I just want to, you know, try to make the point that, you know, there are not two versions of the facts. There are only facts. And, you know, the overwhelming majority of the case — of the time yesterday, you had Democrats talking about the actual facts of this investigation and you had Republicans essentially making things up.

“You had Republicans essentially making up facts about when the Ukrainians knew when the aid was cut off. And to the extent we can, I think we should try to police that in our journalistic function of trying to talk about–“

And lastly, former Obama lackey Jim Sciutto chimed in also accusing Republicans of lying:

“But they also lied. Because Ukraine did know about the aid delay in July. It’s in sworn testimony from Laura cooper. It’s in e-mails, and yet they kept repeating, Ukrainians didn’t even know, despite the facts!” he gushed.

Let’s look at this for a second. Here’s what CNN reported from Laura Cooper’s testimony back in November:

But Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, testified as part of the House impeachment inquiry that some members of her staff recalled receiving queries about the aid from Ukrainian officials on July 25 — the same day as Trump’s much-scrutinized phone call with the Ukrainian President.

“What is going on with Ukrainian security assistance?” one Ukrainian contact emailed a member of her staff, Cooper recalled.

Cooper couldn’t say for certain whether the Ukrainian check-ins came because they were aware a hold was in place on the aid. But when asked if it could have just been a regular inquiry about the assistance package, Cooper responded: “It’s my experience with the Ukrainians they would call about specific things, not just generally checking in on the assistance package.”

Cooper testified that the Ukrainians were asking about the aid on July 25. She’s NOT testifying they knew it was being held by the administration. She admitted that she doesn’t know why they were asking, only that they were asking.

So clearly what Toobin and Scuitto are saying here is WRONG because there is no testimony from Cooper or anyone else suggesting Ukraine knew there was a hold on aid at the time of the July call. They are doing exactly what they are accusing Republicans of doing, lying about it. There is, however, plenty of testimony that Ukrainian officials did not know there was a hold on aid and and when they found out there was a hold, they didn’t know why it was being held.

Again, this is why people don’t trust CNN because their people can’t even get basic facts correct about the testimony that we all heard, and that CNN’s own news article reportedly accurately. And what makes this even more egregious is that they want to be the arbiter of who’s telling the truth and who’s not.


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