Expert says White House sidelined him
WASHINGTON — A senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy told impeachment investigators Tuesday that he was all but cut out of decisions regarding the country after a May meeting organized by Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, describing his sidelining by President Donald Trump’s inner circle as “wrong,” according to a lawmaker who heard the testimony.
The revelation from George P. Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, emerged as he became the latest top administration official to submit to hours of closed-door testimony to the House committees investigating how Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
Despite an edict by the White House not to cooperate with what it has called an illegitimate inquiry, Kent was one of a procession of top officials who have made the trip to the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill to sit for hours with impeachment investigators, unspooling a remarkably consistent tale. They have detailed how Trump sought to manipulate U.S. policy in Ukraine to meet his goals, circumventing career diplomats and policy experts and inserting his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani into the process, raising alarms in the West Wing and throughout the government.
“Here is a senior State Department official responsible for six countries, one of which is Ukraine, who found himself outside of a parallel process that he felt was undermining 28 years of U.S. policy and promoting the rule of law in Ukraine,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., said of Kent, after emerging from the room where he was being deposed.
“And that was wrong,” Connolly said. “He used that word, ‘wrong.’ ”
After the May 23 meeting called by Mulvaney, Kent told investigators, he and others whose portfolios included Ukraine were edged out by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union; Kurt Volker, the special envoy for Ukraine; and Rick Perry, the energy secretary, who “declared themselves the three people now responsible for Ukraine policy,” Connolly said.
Kent said he was told at another point to “lay low” on Ukraine matters.
The accounts are trickling out even as the White House seeks to block even more information from surfacing in the impeachment inquiry. Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday defied a request by the investigators for documents related to the inquiry, and the Defense Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and Giuliani all gave notice that they would defy subpoenas to turn over material. All of them cited the lack of a House vote authorizing the impeachment inquiry as grounds for stonewalling.
In a sternly worded response to an unusual request for documents, Matthew E. Morgan, the counsel to the vice president, accused the committees of requesting material that is “clearly not vice-presidential records” and blasted the investigation enterprise as a “self-proclaimed ‘impeachment inquiry’ ” that was ultimately illegitimate.
But House Democratic leaders, who spent much of Tuesday privately polling their rank-and-file members about whether to hold such a vote — a move that could carry political risks and which they have resisted — said they were not planning one.
“There is no requirement that we have a vote,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “We’re not here to call bluffs, we’re here to find the truth.”
Witness interviews and public records have now confirmed key elements of an anonymous CIA whistleblower complaint that accused Trump of abusing his power to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election, though critical questions remain unanswered.
“Every witness we have heard thus far has corroborated the basic narrative,” Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., a former State Department official involved in the House investigation. “At first gradually and then completely, official policy was replaced by a shadow policy run by Giuliani that had as its objective not our national interest but the president’s political interest.” Republicans, who have pounded Democrats for not holding the vote, kept up the pressure Tuesday, accusing them of ignoring obvious precedent set in the two modern presidential impeachment investigations to deny Trump and his party a fair process.
Across the Capitol, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, said Democrats had thrown “fairness and precedent to the wind.” And at the White House, Trump picked up a similar line of argument, accusing Democrats of “allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings.”
Democrats defended their investigation, and said it was bearing fruit.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the inquiry was being conducted behind closed doors to preserve its independence, and insisted that Republicans on the committee have been given an equal opportunity to ask questions.
Schiff said that the committees had made “dramatic progress” in understanding the July phone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine that prompted the whistleblower complaint. And the witnesses, Schiff said, had made clear that there was a paper record that had not been provided to Congress, despite numerous subpoenas.
“The case of obstruction of Congress continues to build,” he said.
New requests for depositions continued to stack up. The committees wrote Friday to two top officials at the White House budget office, requesting they appear next week to discuss the suspension of the security aid, according to one of the officials. They targeted Russ Vought, the office’s acting director, and Michael Duffey, a senior Trump appointee there who was said to have helped approve orders freezing the funds.