Democrats dial in on impeachment

Nancy Pelosi has accused Donald Trump of bribery as her party makes its case in plain language, writes Mike DeBonis

Democrats have sharpened their case for impeachment, escalating their rhetoric against President Donald Trump as additional evidence emerged potentially implicating him directly in the abuse-of-power controversy surrounding US relations with Ukraine.

Using her most aggressive language yet, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Trump of committing “bribery” by seeking to use United States military aid as leverage to pressure the Ukrainian Government to conduct investigations that could politically benefit the President.

Pelosi’s move to cite a specific constitutional offence and move away from using the lawyerly Latin term “quid pro quo” to describe the President’s actions came as a second official from the US Embassy in Kiev was said to have overheard Trump discussing political “investigations” in a July 26 phone call with Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the European Union who served as a key liaison between the White House and Ukraine’s fledgling Government.

That phone call, which Trump has said he doesn’t recall, is expected to play a pivotal role in upcoming impeachment proceedings, as Democrats seek to directly tie Trump to what they charge was a “bribery” scheme worthy of removal from office. David Holmes, an embassy staffer in Ukraine who allegedly overheard Trump discussing “investigations” with Sondland, is slated to testify behind closed doors in the House impeachment probe today.

Democrats have seized on Holmes’ allegation — which was revealed on Thursday during testimony by William Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine — as evidence of Trump’s culpability in impeachable offences.

Pelosi said yesterday that testimony by Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent highlighted how Trump had abused his power.

Both senior diplomats testified that it was inappropriate for Trump and his allies to push for investigations targeting former VicePresident Joe Biden, a 2020 presidential candidate, and a debunked theory about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry and that the President abused power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.

In response, the White House and congressional Republicans have emphasised the diplomats’ lack of firsthand knowledge of Trump’s actions on Ukraine.

GOP lawmakers argued that Kent and Taylor have never spoken directly to Trump — and therefore cannot say with confidence that he tried to strong-arm a US ally into doing him political favours.

“Their understanding, which is the foundation of the case for the Democrats, was based on secondhand information,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said yesterday.

For his part, Trump continued to complain about the impeachment proceedings.

“This Impeachment

Hoax is such a bad precedent and sooo bad for our Country!” he wrote on Twitter.

The impeachment hearings will continue today with public and private testimony.

Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine who was recalled earlier this year by Trump, is scheduled to appear at an open hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.

Yovanovitch said in an October 11 deposition that she was the target of a smear campaign to orchestrate her removal that involved Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian officials suspected of fostering corruption, according to a transcript.

While Yovanovitch’s testimony could help Democrats build a broad case that Trump and Giuliani were using conspiracy theories and shadowy arrangements to advance their personal and political interests in Ukraine, Holmes’ private testimony is expected to be more critical to the central thrust of the impeachment inquiry.

In his testimony on Thursday, Taylor quoted the embassy staffer saying that after he overheard Trump inquire about “the investigations” on a phone call with Sondland, he heard Sondland tell the President “that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward”. The aide also said Sondland later described Trump as more interested in “the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing”, than Ukraine policy, Taylor testified. Taylor did not name the staff member, but several people familiar with the situation have confirmed it was Holmes.

Suriya Jayanti, a Foreign Service officer based at the US Embassy in

Kiev, also overheard the call that was described by Taylor, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It’s not clear if Democrats will seek testimony from Jayanti.

The July 26 call came a day after Trump pushed for investigations into Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukrainian election meddling during a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump has described his phone call with Zelenskiy as “perfect”.

While Republicans have struggled to rally around a consistent defence of Trump in the face of weeks of incriminating revelations, yesterday they sought to undermine the witness testimony by dismissing it as “hearsay”. The strategy, however, could be risky. Witnesses with firsthand knowledge of some of the President’s actions are set to testify publicly next week, including Sondland, and others are currently being blocked by the White House.

One longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is expected to break ranks and testify behind closed doors tomorrow, potentially filling in important details on the holdup of military aid to Ukraine. Mark Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear.

But unlike these other OMB officials, Sandy is a career employee, not one appointed by the President. He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade, under presidents of both parties, climbing the ranks to his current role as deputy associate director for national security programmes.

Sandy could provide insight into the process by which Trump’s White House held up US$400 million ($631.8m) in military and security aid to Ukraine over the summer. So far, none of Trump’s defenders have provided a clear explanation for why the aid was frozen, only to be released after a whistleblower came forward with a report that was flagged to Congress.

In a message to Trump and in response to the GOP criticism, Pelosi said, “If the President has something that is exculpatory — Mr President, that means you have anything that shows your innocence — then he should make that known.”

Pelosi’s embrace of the term bribery — one of only two crimes specifically cited in the Constitution as impeachable — comes after nearly two months of debate over whether Trump’s conduct amounted to a “quid pro quo” — a Latin term describing an exchange of things of value.

Bribery, Pelosi suggested, amounted to a translation of quid pro quo that would stand to be more accessible to Americans.

Article II of the Constitution holds that the president and other civil federal officials “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”.

Several Democrats have stopped using the term “quid pro quo”, instead describing “bribery” as a more direct summation of Trump’s alleged conduct.