PREZ TRIED HARD TO WIN UKRAINE BIDEN PROBES, OFFICIALS TESTIFY
WASHINGTON — There was no hinting around, it was a straight-out trade, two key White House officials told impeachment investigators. If Ukraine’s new leader wanted an Oval Office welcome from Donald Trump — and he did — he would have to open a public probe into the president’s Democratic foe Joe Biden and his son.
“There was no ambiguity,” said Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer assigned to the National Security Council, recounting an extraordinary day of meetings at the White House last summer.
According to transcripts released Friday in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, Vindman and Fiona Hill, a former White House Russia adviser, both gave firsthand descriptions of scenes central to the congressional probe.
Vindman testified that Gordon Sondland, a Trump donor serving as ambassador to the European Union, told the visiting officials that if they hoped to win that coveted faceto-face meeting, “the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens.”
The Bidens? the House questioners pressed. In the White House Ward Room he mentioned the word “Bidens”?
“To the best of my recollection, yes,” Vindman testified. “My visceral reaction to what was being called for suggested that it was explicit.”
In another episode that day at the White House, Hill testified that Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton “immediately stiffened” as Sondland “blurted out” that he had worked out with Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney just that trade — the Ukrainians’ probe for an Oval Office welcome.
“Well, we have an agreement with the chief