Live impeachment TV grips America
President Donald Trump was directly involved in efforts to force Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, the senior US diplomat in Kiev has said.
Bill Taylor, the US charge d’affaires, said that Trump used a backchannel of loyal aides to apply the pressure.
In a lengthy opening statement in the first public impeachment hearing against the president, Taylor outlined what he regarded as a widespread effort to reshape US-Ukraine policy to Trump’s benefit.
The diplomat said that allies of the president, such as Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, and members of the administration, including Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, Gordon Sondland, the EU ambassador, and several cabinet members, were aware of such activities.
The scheme involved withholding military aid, and a White House meeting with Trump in exchange for a promise from Kiev to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who had worked at a Ukrainian energy firm.
All eyes yesterday were on the intelligence committee’s impeachment hearing against Trump, the fourth US leader to face such a prospect after Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
Television channels dropped programmes to show proceedings at the House of Representatives. Millions watched Taylor and George Kent, the senior State Department official overseeing eastern Europe, testify before the House intelligence committee.
Taylor, 71, the most senior US diplomat in Kiev, said that he took up his post as acting ambassador despite concerns over the influence of Giuliani. He said that he faced a mix of ‘‘encouraging, confusing and ultimately alarming’’ circumstances in Kiev. He came to realise that a ‘‘highly irregular’’ channel of diplomacy led by Giuliani appeared to be operating to attain goals tied to the president’s personal agenda.
Taylor said he was told that about US$400 million (NZ$620m) of military aid had been withheld from Ukraine by the White House and that ‘‘the directive had come from the president’’. He disclosed that Trump had been overheard speaking to
Sondland about the progress of eliciting a pledge for ‘‘investigations’’ from the Ukrainians.
The diplomat testified that Sondland told his aide that the president ‘‘cares more about the investigations of Biden’’ than about the US alliance with Kiev.
Taylor said he believed that ‘‘withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be ’crazy’.’’ He added: ‘‘I believed that then and I believe it now.’’
A flurry of preparations preceded the testimonies yesterday, with Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill convening to stage practice runs before the hearing.
Democrats, who have a majority in the House of Representatives, are under pressure to build bipartisan support for impeachment in Congress as well as in public.
Though a slim majority of Americans have told pollsters that they back impeachment, public support is split along partisan lines. More than 80 per cent of those polled said that the hearings were unlikely to change their mind. – The Times