President tied US aid to probes, envoy says
Testimony at odds with Trump’s denials on Ukraine, Bidens
WASHINGTON — The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine told lawmakers Tuesday that President Donald Trump made the release of military aid contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain.
The closed-door testimony from acting Ambassador William Taylor undermined the repeated statements of the president and the depositions of other administration officials, with the potential to reset the House impeachment probe of Trump.
Taylor, a seasoned diplomat, Army veteran and meticulous note taker, provided an expansive description of a series of events at the heart of an investigation that poses the most serious threat to the Trump presidency.
“The testimony is very disturbing,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said.
In a 15-page opening statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Taylor stood by his characterization that it was “crazy” to make the assistance contingent on investigations he found troubling.
He described how officials from the Pentagon, State Department, CIA and former national security adviser John Bolton tried unsuccessfully to get a meeting with Trump to release the aid. He testified that Ukrainian officials were blindsided by the White House’s decision to release a rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy with “virtually no notice of the release and they were livid.”
Upon arriving in Kyiv last spring Taylor became alarmed by secondary diplomatic channels involving U.S. officials that he called “weird,” he said.
Taylor walked lawmakers through a series of conversations he had with other U.S. diplomats who were trying to obtain what one had called the “deliverable” of Ukrainian help investigating Trump’s political rivals.
“In August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular informal channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s testimony filled in some blanks about the activities of U.S. officials who appear to have sought Ukrainian help at the behest of Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
At issue is whether the White House conditioned military aid and a meeting between the two presidents on Zelenskiy’s cooperation, and whether that constitutes an abuse of Trump’s office.
Taylor contradicted earlier testimony from Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, a key player in the effort to draw Ukraine into the election-related investigations.
Sondland told House investigators last week that he recalls “no discussions” with anyone at the State Department or White House about investigating former vice president and 2020 president candidate Joe Biden or his son Hunter.
Taylor testified that Trump told Sondland in a Sept. 7 phone call that Zelenskiy must “go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskiy should want to do this himself.”
The contents of this conversation were given to Taylor by the White House official in charge of Europe, Tim Morrison, who after hearing that call notified Bolton and National Security Council lawyers, Taylor said.
House Democrats are expected to use Taylor’s account of his conversations with Sondland to show that Trump had issued clear orders about what he wanted from Zelenskiy.
“During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskiy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” Taylor testified.
Hunter Biden had been a board member of Burisma, a large Ukrainian gas company.
“Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskiy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor told House investigators.
“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskiy ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations,” Taylor said.
An official working on the impeachment inquiry said Tuesday that Taylor is testifying under subpoena after the State Department attempted to block his appearance.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said Taylor “drew a straight line” with documents, timelines and individual conversations in his records.
“I do not know how you would listen to today’s testimony from Ambassador Taylor and come to any other (conclusion) except that the president abused his power and withheld foreign aid,” she said.