‘I heard Trump ask for Ukraine to probe Biden’
DONALD TRUMP’S personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was clearly pursuing political investigations of Democrats in Ukraine at the president’s direction, key witnesses told the impeachment inquiry.
Their evidence undermines the US president’s argument that he only wanted to root out Ukrainian corruption.
State Department official David Holmes said he understood Mr Giuliani’s push to investigate Burisma – the Ukraine gas company where Joe Biden’s son Hunter served on the board – was code for the former vice-president and his family.
The House Intelligence Committee inquiry focuses on allegations that Mr Trump sought investigations of Mr Biden and his son in return for military aid that Ukraine needed to fend off Russian aggression. Mr Holmes came forward after overhearing Mr Trump ask about ‘investigations’ during a call with US ambassador Gordon Sondland in Kiev this summer.
Mr Sondland is said to have replied that the Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelensky,
‘will, quote, “do anything you ask him
President on the line: Mr Trump is said to have asked his Ukraine counterpart for ‘a favour’ to”.’ Mr Holmes told of his alarm as Mr Giuliani made ‘frequent public statements pushing for Ukraine to investigate interference in the 2016 election and issues related to Burisma and the Bidens’.
Former White House Russia analyst Fiona Hill told the inquiry Mr Giuliani ‘was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would probably come back to haunt us. I think that’s where we are today’.
British-born Ms Hill warned Republican politicians – and implicitly Mr Trump – to stop pushing the alternative ‘fictional’ narrative that Ukraine rather than Russia meddled in the 2016 US election.
She contended that Russia wanted to ‘delegitimise our entire presidency’, whoever was elected, by sowing the ‘seed of doubt’ in the outcome of the election. She warned Russia is gearing up to intervene in next year’s vote. ‘We are running out of time to stop them,’ she said.
The inquiry was sparked after a whistleblower made an official complaint about a call in July in which Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky for ‘a favour’ – the Biden investigation.