House releases first depositions in Trump impeachment inquiry
WASHINGTON – House committees that have conducted the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump behind closed doors for the last six weeks released the first two transcripts of witness testimony Monday even as four other White House officials defied subpoenas and refused to appear.
Among the four was John Eisenberg, a deputy counsel to the president and legal adviser to the National Security Council, thought to be a key witness after others testified that he attempted to conceal records of Trump’s controversial July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by reportedly moving a rough transcript of the call to a highly classified computer server not normally used for that purpose.
The phone call is at the heart of the inquiry into whether Trump improperly sought to use foreign policy for personal gain by pressing Zelenskiy to investigate Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, to undermine Biden’s 2020 run for the White House.
The four officials’ refusal to testify marked a victory for White House efforts to block the impeachment inquiry after 14 current and former officials from across the administration gave sworn testimony – over White House objections – about Trump’s decision to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while pushing its government to dig up dirt on his political opponents.
The two depositions released Monday – of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and Michael Mckinley, a former senior aide to Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo – flesh out the concerns of U.S. diplomats in Washington and Kyiv about the White House’s back-channel pressure on Ukraine’s government.
The transcripts also help illuminate the closed-door proceedings, including bickering between Democrats and Republicans, as the inquiry moves toward public hearings, and a potential vote to impeach Trump, in coming weeks.
Yovanovitch, who was abruptly recalled to Washington in May, said her work as U.S. ambassador was undercut for months by Trump’s son Donald Jr., conservative media figures and others as the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, pursued a secret shadow foreign policy, according to the transcript of her nine hours of testimony on Oct. 11.
“If you have the president’s son saying, you know, ‘We need to pull these clowns,’ or however he referred to me, it makes it hard to be a credible ambassador in a country,” she told lawmakers, according to the transcript.
Three House committees – Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform – have interviewed more than a dozen current and former officials since the inquiry was launched on Sept. 24.
The committees have scheduled several other depositions this week. It’s unclear if John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser until September, will testify on Thursday, as lawmakers have requested.
Yovanovitch testified that she was recalled to Washington from Ukraine in May after she was targeted by what she called unfounded public criticisms of her, as well as what she called a private effort to remove her.
“Ukrainians were wondering whether I was going to be leaving, whether we really represented the president, U.S. policy, etc. And so I think it was – you know, it really kind of cut the ground out from underneath us,” she said, according to the transcript.
Yovanovitch said she first learned of Giuliani’s involvement in Ukraine late last year and was told in February by a senior Ukrainian official that she “really needed to watch (her) back.”
Yovanovitch said the official linked the effort to remove her to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two U.S. businessmen who were working with Giuliani in Ukraine and were recently charged with campaign finance violations.
Yovanovitch testified that she was told the State Department wouldn’t issue a statement defending her against Trump Jr., Giuliani and others because it could be “undermined ... by the president,” likely in a tweet.
The transcripts reveal contentious points in the depositions when Republicans and Democrats argued over whether administration or White House lawyers should be allowed in the room, and why Democrats were holding nonclassified material in a room reserved for classified material.
Mckinley, the former aide to Pompeo, testified on Oct. 16 that he had never before seen the State Department used to collect dirt from foreign governments on a president’s political opponents, according to the transcript of his deposition.
“In 37 years in the Foreign Service and different parts of the globe and working on many controversial issues, working 10 years back in Washington, I had never seen that,” Mckinley said.