Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) committee counsel Daniel Goldman began, as the second hour of the Friday impeachment inquiry commenced, to question Democrat witness, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Goldman is a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC, where he regularly criticizes President Donald Trump.

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Goldman is also a donor to President Trump’s opponents.

He’s given a total of $36,000 to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), Doug Jones, Beto O’Rourke, and Max Rose, as cited by the Republican National Committee.

Goldman threw Yovanovitch softballs on Friday morning as she drew conclusions completely based on secondhand information.

She stuck to her probably heavily coached and staged narrative of presidential personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s alleged perfidy against her — and her full innocence regarding any charge of any sort made at any time against her by anyone in the U.S., in Ukraine, or in any part of the known physical universe to include multi-dimensional parallel universes.

Noticeable throughout the entire hearing on Friday morning thus far is that Schiff and his counsel went overboard in claiming witness intimidation by President Trump.

Related: 10 Striking Reactions from Everyday Americans About Friday’s Impeachment Hearings

But how could Yovanovitch have felt intimidated if, by her own admission, she didn’t even see the Trump tweet — referenced by Schiff when he interrupted the proceedings to read it — in the alleged intimidation and it wasn’t directed at her?

And as every American knows, Trump tweets frequently and often.

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Ranking GOP Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) also remarked early on regarding Schiff’s obsession with keeping the name of the CIA informer a secret.

First of all, everyone in D.C. and most in the country already know the name of the so-called whistleblower.

Second, as Nunes remarked, Schiff claims he doesn’t know the name.

If so, said Nunes, then how would he know which name to keep secret and if indeed that was the name of the informant if it was made public?

As the committee takes a break for a House vote, Ambassador Yovanovitch and her Democrat handlers cannot be too pleased with her performance so far.

Related: Dem Chair Stops GOP from Speaking Before Yovanovitch’s Testimony

Like her two previous Dem-coached colleagues, she has failed to meet the Democrat hype about her.

Her delivery was solid, if self-aggrandizing and softly passive-aggressive.

But she broke no new ground and mostly related the details of her own firing, a tale already well known in D.C. and to the committee.

The ambassador’s staged performance for the press and public will not go so smoothly in her upcoming questioning at the hands of GOP Intel Committee Counsel Steve Castor and bulldog questioner Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

Inconsistencies in her past statements will likely be brought up, as will the statements of her colleagues that no quid pro quo ever existed in any Trump administration dealings with President Volodymr Zelensky of Ukraine.

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