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by Joel Pollak
\nBREITBART<\/p>\n
Though staff members are not typically sworn in, witnesses must be sworn in and deliver testimony under oath.<\/p>\n
Both Democrat counsel Barry Berke and Republican Counsel Stephen Castor delivered opening statements. Berke in particular made several factual assertions \u2014 many of which were dubious at best, and outright false at worst.<\/p>\n
For example, Berke claimed that State Department staffer David Holmes had \u201cheard it from the president himself\u201d when he testified that President Donald Trump was interested in Ukraine conducting investigations.<\/p>\n
In fact, Holmes had not heard anything directly from the president. Rather, he claimed to have overheard part of a conversation on a mobile phone between U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and the president. Sondland was at an outdoor table at a restaurant at the time, and Holmes had been drinking wine with him and two other staffers. Despite a habit of taking notes, and despite the fact that he later emailed the U.S. embassy in Sweden about a part of the conversation dealing with then-jailed U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky, Holmes never wrote down what he later claimed he heard the president telling Sondland. Burke suggested, however, that he heard the president first-hand.<\/p>\n
In addition, Berke played a deceptively edited clip of President Trump speaking at a Turning Point USA conference, claiming that the president believed he could do \u201cwhatever I want.\u201d\u00a0In fact<\/a>, as the full context of the president\u2019s statement \u2014 a fragment of a sentence \u2014 made clear, Trump was talking specifically about his power to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which he did not ultimately do.<\/p>\n Nadler\u2019s failure to swear in the witnesses was significant because it allowed the counsels to make claims without fear of perjuring themselves.<\/p>\n It was also significant for another reason: when Republicans raised a point of order, objecting to Berke impugning the president\u2019s motives, which is forbidden under House rules, Nadler ruled that the point of order was invalid because Berke was not a witness.<\/p>\n Later, Nadler described Berke and Castor as witnesses, prompting Republican objections that he had contradicted himself.<\/p>\n