Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Inquiry’s public phase kicks off
Two diplomats testify on Ukraine concerns
WASHINGTON — The House began the public phase of its impeachment inquiry Wednesday with testimony from two career diplomats who Democrats see as key to building their case that President Donald Trump acted inappropriately in his dealings with Ukraine.
William Taylor, acting ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified before the House Intelligence Committee in nationally televised proceedings.
Trump called the hearing a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” during an Oval Office meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and said he had not been watching.
Democrats are trying to show the public that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden at a time when nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine was being withheld.
Taylor, the top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, told the committee that, when he arrived in that country in June, he “found a confusing and unusual arrangement for making U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”
“There appeared to be two channels of U.S. policymaking and implementation, one regular and one highly irregular,” Taylor told the impeachment committee.
Taylor told lawmakers that he was greatly alarmed to learn in September that the Trump administration’s demands to Ukraine included withholding military aid.
Asked by a Democratic lawyer if he had ever seen “another example of foreign aid conditioned on the personal or political interests of the president of the United States,” Taylor said: “I have not.”
Previously, Taylor had expressed concern that the president appeared to be withholding a much-sought White House meeting with Zelenskiy. In early September, he learned that security assistance was also being withheld while Trump administration officials sought a public announcement by Zelenskiy that his country would investigate the Bidens.
“It’s one thing to try to leverage a meeting in the White House. It’s another thing, I thought, to leverage security assistance,” Taylor said, noting that Ukraine is fighting a war on its territory with Russia. Withholding security assistance to a country at war “was much more alarming,” Taylor said.
Taylor added new information to his opening statement Wednesday, describing a July phone call between Trump and U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland that was overheard by a member of Taylor’s staff in which Trump purportedly asked about “the investigations.” That staff member is scheduled to testify privately Friday, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
Taylor said that, after the call, the aide asked Sondland what Trump thought about Ukraine, and Sondland said that Trump cares “more about the investigations of Biden” that the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, “was pressing for.”
Kent told the committee he was “alarmed” by Giuliani’s efforts “to gin up politically motivated investigations,” both because it ended up in the ouster of former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and because they were “infecting U.S. engagement with Ukraine.”
Kent said Giuliani’s campaign was based on “false information” peddled on the Ukrainian side by “corrupt former prosecutors” who were simply seeking “to exact revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct, including U.S. diplomats.”
“It was unexpected, and most unfortunate, however, to watch some Americans — including those who allied themselves with corrupt Ukrainians in pursuit of private agendas — launch attacks on dedicated public servants advancing U.S. interests in Ukraine,” Kent said in his opening statement. “In my opinion, those attacks undermined U.S. and Ukrainian national interests and damaged our critical bilateral relationship.”
Kent added that he raised concern in February 2015 that Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of energy company Burisma “could create the perception of a conflict of interest.” But he said he “did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny” — and that U.S. officials were “consistently advocating” to revive the case against the company’s founder.
Kent also told the House panel Wednesday that there was no basis for Trump’s assertion that Joe Biden, while vice president, had stopped an investigation into a Ukrainian gas company where his son served on the board of directors. “None whatsoever,” Kent testified.
At the start of Wednesday’s session, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, outlined the question at the core of the impeachment inquiry — whether the president abused his office for political gain.
“The matter is as simple and as terrible as that,” said Schiff of California. “Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency but the future of the presidency itself.”
Rep. Devin Nunes of California,
the top Republican on the committee, used the first lines of his opening statement to portray the Democratic impeachment inquiry as the evolution of a failed effort to remove Trump for unproved allegations of Russian collusion.
He went on to accuse Democrats of abuses, including “trying to obtain nude pictures of Trump from Russian pranksters pretending to be Ukrainian officials” and “countless other deceptions large and small that make them the last people on earth with the credibility to hurl more preposterous accusations at their political opponents.”
“Anyone familiar with the Democrats’ scorched-earth war against President Trump would not be surprised to see all the typical signs that this is a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign,” he said.
Democrats said Trump was engaged in “bribery” and “extortion.” Republicans said nothing really happened — the military aid Trump was withholding from Ukraine while he pushed for the investigations was ultimately released.
“I don’t think President Trump was trying to end corruption in Ukraine,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn. “I think he was trying to aim corruption in Ukraine at Vice President Biden and at the 2020 election.”
Republicans argued that the Democrats have no more than second- and third-hand knowledge of allegations that Trump held up military aid in return for Ukrainian investigations.
“The American people see through all this,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. “They understand the facts support the president. They understand this process is unfair. And they see through the whole darn sham.”
Earlier, as the hearing began, several Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee sought to delay the hearing by focusing on the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment probe.
Rep. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, made a motion to subpoena the whistleblower. After a back-and-forth, Schiff responded that the motion would be suspended until after Wednesday’s witnesses testified.
Jordan said Schiff is the only lawmaker who knows the identity of the whistleblower — a statement Schiff immediately disputed.
“I do not know the identity of the whistleblower, and I am determined to make sure that identity is protected,” he said.
“Anyone familiar with the Democrats’ scorched-earth war against President Trump would not be surprised to see all the typical signs that this is a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign.” — Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez, Mike DeBonis, Karoun Demirjian and Anne Gearan of The Washington Post; by Nicholas Fandos and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; and by Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Colleen Long, Mike Balsamo, Eric Tucker, Laurie Kellman, Alan Fram, Zeke J. Miller and Matthew Daly of The Associated Press.