White House aides testify

Witnesses summoned by Republicans don’t help Trump’s cause

Washington — White House aides who listened in on President Donald Trump’s controversial call with Ukraine’s president testified publicly for the first time Tuesday, bringing the impeachment inquiry directly into the White House and providing damaging new details about Trump’s efforts to press a foreign leader to investigate his political rivals while he held up crucial military aid.

The firsthand testimony countered days of complaints from Trump and his allies that previous testimony in the House Intelligence Committee was based on second- or third-hand accounts. Instead, the public heard from several officials or staffers who

were on the call, or attended White House meetings, at the root of the inquiry.

The third day of hearings in the Democratic-led inquiry dragged on for more than 11 hours as lawmakers from both sides peppered four witnesses with questions. At least some evidence bolstered the Democrats’ case, and Republicans largely responded by trying to discredit the witnesses rather than dispute their testimony.

One key witness, who was summoned by Republicans, wound up shooting down conspiracy theories embraced by the president, saying pursuing them in Ukraine did not serve the “national interest.” He also called it inappropriate for Trump to ask a foreign leader to investigate a U.S. political rival.

The first witness Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, said he was so alarmed by Trump’s “demand” on a July 25 call for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to publicly investigate the Bidens that Vindman reported it “without hesitation” to a White House lawyer, calling it his “duty to report my concerns to the proper people in the chain of command.”

“It was inappropriate, it was improper for the president to demand an investigation into a political opponent, especially (from) a foreign power where there’s at best dubious belief that this would be a completely impartial investigation,” Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran, said during the hearing.

Although Trump didn’t use the word “demand,” Zelensky would have understood it that way “because of the power disparity between the two leaders,” said Vindman, who emigrated to the United States as a baby when his father fled the Soviet Union.

In response, Republican lawmakers intensified attacks on the media and sought to undermine the witness’ credibility. In several striking moments, they suggested Vindman was inflating his importance and questioned his integrity, even his decision to wear his Army dress uniform to the hearing. The 20-year Army veteran said he wore it because his patriotism had been questioned.

A Republican lawyer pressed Vindman to explain why a senior Ukrainian official had asked him several times to consider serving as the country’s defense minister, and asked if the official spoke in English or Ukrainian. Vindman said he dismissed the offer — made in English — as “funny,” and had immediately reported it to his superiors and U.S. counterintelligence officials, as required.

The harsh questioning followed conservative media attacks on Vindman’s loyalty to Trump and, implicitly, the country. Republican lawmakers also pressed him on whether he leaked to the media or would describe himself as a “never Trumper,” allegations he denied.

Along with Vindman, the first serving White House official to give a deposition, and one of the first witnesses to provide direct, firsthand confirmation of numerous details in the anonymous whistleblower’s complaint that first fueled the inquiry, the committee also heard from Jennifer Williams, a State Department Ukraine expert assigned to Vice President Mike Pence’s office.

Tim Morrison, who focuses on Europe and Russia policy at the National Security Council, and Kurt Volker, the former special representative to Ukraine, testified in the afternoon and evening.

Republicans had summoned them in hopes they would bolster their case that Trump did not block military assistance in a direct ploy to get Ukraine to help his re-election campaign. But both Morrison and Volker ultimately said they thought it inappropriate for Trump to ask a foreign leader to investigate a U.S. political rival.

Although Morrison said he found nothing improper with president’s phone call, he said he contacted White House lawyers because he worried how it would play in Washington’s charged political climate if the conversations leaked. In the end, the White House released a rough transcript of the call.

“My fears have been realized,” Morrison said.

Volker probably proved a bigger disappointment to Republicans. Following allegations that he misled lawmakers in his initial Oct. 3 deposition, Volker opened his testimony by revising his account in significant ways, saying he had “learned many things that I did not know at the time of the events in question.”

He said that he did not initially see a link between Trump’s demands for an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, and the fact that Biden’s son, Hunter, had served on its board. But he admitted that the Ukrainians would have reasonably conflated the two.

“In retrospect, I should have seen that connection differently, and had I done so, I would have raised my own objections,” he said.

He claimed he did not understand that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, was pushing Ukraine’s new leader to investigate the Bidens, and he publicly distanced himself from it. Indeed, Volker said he knew Biden for 24 years and praised him as an “honorable man and I hold him in the highest regard.”

Volker also shot down conspiracy theories embraced by Trump that Ukraine — rather than Russia — had meddled in the 2016 election.

And he dismissed Republican allegations that Biden had corruptly sought the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son, saying such assertions were outlandish.

“These things I consider to be conspiracy theories that have been circulated by the Ukrainians, particularly the former prosecutor general. They’re not things that we should be pursuing as part of our national security strategy with Ukraine,” Volker testified.

“We should be supporting Ukraine’s democracy reforms, its own fight against corruption domestically, its struggle against Russia, its defense capabilities. These are the heart of what we should be doing and I don’t think pursuing these things serves a national interest.”

Volker also testified that he didn’t know about the significance that others — including then-national security adviser John Bolton — put on a July 10 meeting at the White House between senior administration officials and Ukrainians.

During that meeting, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, raised the prospect that U.S. military aid was linked to investigations, disturbing Bolton and others, Volker said.

Volker did not raise the meeting in his initial testimony. On Tuesday, he said “all of us thought it was inappropriate.”

Sondland is scheduled to testify today, and lawmakers from both parties consider it crucial since he had numerous conversations with Trump about Ukraine, including a cellphone call from a restaurant in Kyiv on July 26, the day after the call with Zelenskiy.