Impeachment testimony details ‘snake pits’
WASHINGTON — A senior State Department official described in perhaps the starkest terms to date President Donald Trump’s shadow efforts to force Ukraine’s leadership to open investigations that would benefit him politically, according to a transcript of his impeachment testimony released Thursday.
Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, who oversaw Ukraine policy, told lawmakers that Trump demanded that the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, open investigations into the 2016 U.S. election, Trump’s former rival Hillary Clinton and former vice president Joe Biden in exchange for an Oval Office meeting.
Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to a microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,” Kent told House impeachment investigators.
Kent’s assessment came from a summary of a conversation that Trump had with Gordon Sondland, a Trump megadonor turned diplomat, who from his perch as U.S. ambassador to the European Union in Brussels had seized control of Ukraine policy.
The senior diplomat, in testimony delivered last month, also criticized Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, whom he described as waging a “campaign of lies” aimed at the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and designed to advance his and the president’s personal agenda.
Democrats expect Kent to testify publicly on Wednesday with William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, as the impeachment inquiry moves into a new phase.
Trump, meanwhile, offered a glimpse into the defense he would like Republicans to mount on his behalf, insisting that Biden, a potential 2020 generalelection challenger, and his son Hunter be called to testify as part of the impeachment proceedings. The younger Biden served on the board of Burisma, a controversial and obscure Ukrainian gas company that Trump pressed Zelenskiy to investigate in a July 25 call.
In a tweet, Trump quoted Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-La., asking, “What did Hunter Biden do for the money?”
“A very good question,” Trump added in his own words. “He and Sleepy Joe must testify.”
Kent’s testimony was released on the same day that Jennifer Williams, a Foreign Service officer and top aide to Vice President Mike Pence, offered insight behind closed doors into Pence’s knowledge of the shadow campaign to extract political favors from the Ukrainians.
Williams is expected to be the last witness in the non-public phase of the inquiry.
The transcript of Kent’s hours-long deposition suggests that the career diplomat’s public testimony will lay bare his disappointment and anger with the president’s approach to Ukraine and the conduct of his own State Department in responding to Congress as lawmakers moved to investigate the administration’s dealings with Ukraine.
Kent began his closeddoor testimony by describing “snake pits” in both Washington and Kiev that were populated by corrupt Ukrainian politicians, selfinterested businessmen and ambitious U.S. officials scrambling to win the president’s favor.
Throughout March, Giuliani trafficked in “slander” designed to get the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, fired from her posting in Kiev and clear a roadblock to the agenda Giuliani and his clients were pursuing there, Kent said. Yovanovitch is also expected to be among the Democrats’ roster of public witnesses next week.
At various points Kent also described himself as battling officials inside the State Department to ensure that congressional subpoenas were honored and a full accounting of Giuliani’s activities reached lawmakers.
Shortly after the ambassador was sent home, control over Ukraine policy shifted to Sondland, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. Sondland, rather than working through traditional State Department channels, had his own “network of influence” that ran through Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.
About one week before Trump spoke by phone with Zelenskiy, the White House put a hold on $391 million in military aid earmarked for Ukraine. The move took officials throughout the U.S. government by surprise.
“There was a lack of clarity,” he said. “The participants … did not receive an explanation for why this particular action was taken.”
Concerns about the call spread through the White House and State Department, and quickly made their way to a CIA officer who used them as the basis for an unprecedented whistleblower complaint that sparked the historic impeachment probe.
By mid-August, Kent grew worried that the Trump administration was withholding a White House visit, and possibly the military aid, to force the Zelenskiy administration to dig up dirt on the Bidens. He detailed his concerns that such “politically motivated prosecutions were injurious to the rule of law, both in Ukraine and the U.S.” in an internal memo and informed a supervisor, he said.