GOP tries to move inquiry away from Trump
WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Saturday pressed ahead with their efforts to move the impeachment inquiry away from President Donald Trump, calling on Democrats to add witnesses to the probe including former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and the whistleblower whose initial complaint kicked off the investigation.
The GOP demands were met with immediate skepticism from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who warned against “sham investigations” of the Bidens and other issues in a clear signal that many of the witnesses were unlikely to be called.
The clash came as Democrats prepare to enter a new phase of the impeachment inquiry with public hearings beginning Wednesday, which will focus on Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and other Democrats in exchange for military aid or a White House visit by the Ukrainian president. Witnesses who have testified out of public view have largely corroborated the whistleblower’s initial allegations.
Republicans have complained that the Democratic-run inquiry is unfairly partisan, and Trump said Saturday that he will “probably” release a transcript Tuesday of an April call that he made to congratulate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on his election victory.
In the weeks ahead, the GOP’s focus will be to try to minimize Trump’s role in the Ukraine pressure campaign and to justify his actions by highlighting that country’s history of corruption problems, according to Republicans familiar with the party’s strategy who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
More than 2,500 pages of interview transcripts released over the past week provide a road map for the emerging Republican strategy. The documents show the extent to which GOP lawmakers involved in the hearings have focused on unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, Democratic political targets and other subjects favored by Trump allies — much of it ancillary to the probe at hand, according to a Washington Post review of the documents.
One GOP lawmaker repeatedly tried to pressure a witness into saying what he wanted to hear about a Ukrainian company that employed Biden’s son. Another member quizzed a former ambassador in the impeachment inquiry about her national heritage, seeming to probe for bias. And a third Republican interrogated the same diplomat about whether her staff “monitored” the social media account of an altright conspiracy theorist, whose main claim to fame is smearing a Washington pizzeria as the site of a fictional Democratic pedophile ring.
The sprawling list of potential witnesses named by Republicans on Saturday continued the pattern. They included Hunter Biden, whose father is a leading Democratic candidate to challenge Trump in 2020; his business partner Devon Archer; the unnamed whistleblower, whom Trump and some of his allies have campaigned to publicly identify; the researcher Nellie Ohr of Fusion GPS, which commissioned a dossier linking Russia and Trump; and Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian American who worked with the Democratic National Committee.
Republicans also asked to call two witnesses who have already testified behind closed doors, a request that appears likely to be granted by Democrats: National Security Council official Tim Morrison and former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, both of whom corroborated parts of the whistleblower’s complaint while also providing some cover for Republicans.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, argued that witnesses such as Biden and Archer would “assist the American public in understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption, information that bears directly on President Trump’s long-standing and deeply held skepticism of the country.”
Schiff said Democrats would evaluate the requests but added in a statement that the inquiry “will not serve … as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm.”
In their questioning of witnesses so far, Republican lawmakers have been particularly focused on Hunter Biden, who received $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was vice president. They also sought to have witnesses elaborate on why Trump may have been upset with Ukraine and therefore potentially justified in holding back military funding, including asking questions about Ukrainian politicians who said negative things about Trump during his 2016 campaign, the transcripts show.
Some Trump allies have suggested that the negative remarks amounted to Ukraine’s interfering in the 2016 election — a contention that Democrats, intelligence experts and even some Republicans dismiss as an attempt to muddy the waters over Russia’s systematic interference in the election to help Trump. That line of inquiry — including suggestions that Ukrainians were out to get Trump or that the Bidens did something corrupt — is expected to be a recurring theme for Republicans in public hearings this month.
Joe Biden has been a favorite target for Trump-allied lawmakers. Many have adopted Trump’s unsubstantiated assertion that Biden pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because he was investigating Burisma.
In one session, Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., tried three times to get George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, to say there was an investigation of Burisma at the time Joe Biden pushed for Shokin’s exit. U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said the probe into Burisma was dormant at the time.
“But you did testify that Shokin had an investigation into Burisma … correct?” Zeldin asked. After Kent replied, “I did not say that,” Zeldin tried again: “When did you learn of an investigation by Shokin into Burisma?”
“I just told you, I did not learn of an investigation. I’ve read claims that there may have been an investigation,” Kent said.
In the weeks ahead, the GOP’s focus will be to try to minimize Trump’s role in the Ukraine pressure campaign and to justify his actions by highlighting that country’s history of corruption problems, according to Republicans familiar with the party’s strategy.