House to let public in on impeachment probe

Three key witnesses to kick off open hearings set for next Wednesday.

House Democrats will begin convening public impeachment hearings next week, they announced on Wednesday, initially calling three marquee witnesses to begin making a case in public for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

The hearings will kick off next Wednesday, with testimony from William Taylor, the top American envoy in Ukraine, and George Kent, a top State Department official, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Next Friday, Schiff ’s committee will hear from Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, he said.

“More to come,” Schiff added on Twitter.

All three witnesses have already spoken privately with investigators. Yovanovitch testified that she had been removed because Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s private lawyer, and his associates wanted her out of the way. Kent described career diplomats being shoved aside in favor of Giuliani and a shadow Ukraine policy being run out of the White House.

“Those open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves, to make their own determinations about the credibility of the witnesses, but also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct,” Schiff told reporters on Wednesday.

The sessions will not look like traditional congressional hearings, where Democratic and Republican lawmakers alternate asking questions in five-minute blocks and witnesses can easily avoid answering unfavorable questions.

The House voted along party lines last week to approve rules for an impeachment process for which there are few precedents. Those rules include allowing the top Democrat and Republican on the committee to designate questioning to trained staff and for each side to have up to 45 minutes at a time.

ERIN SCHAFF / THE NEW YORK TIMES Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., (from left) Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., talk with reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday. The House Intelligence Committee will hold the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry next week.