Diplomat disputes Trump’s account
Taylor testifies that the White House threatened to withdraw aid unless probes were announced.
WASHINGTON» America’s top diplomat in Ukraine delivered a forceful blow to President Donald Trump’s account of his “perfect” dealings with that nation, telling lawmakers Tuesday that the White House had threatened to withdraw much-needed military aid unless Kyiv announced investigations for Trump’s political benefit.
The explosive, closed-door testimony from acting ambassador William Taylor Jr. undermined Trump’s insistence that he never pressured Ukrainian officials in a potentially improper “quid pro quo.” It also offered House
investigators an expansive road map to what Taylor called a “highly irregular” channel of shadow diplomacy toward Ukraine that lies at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
In a 15-page opening statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Taylor repeatedly expressed his shock and bewilderment as he watched U.S. policy toward Ukraine get overtaken by Trump’s demand that newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky “go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of (Democratic presidential candidate Joe) Biden and 2016 election interference.”
“‘Everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor said he was told by Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
A seasoned diplomat, Army veteran and meticulous note taker, Taylor told lawmakers that former national security adviser John Bolton and other officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA tried unsuccessfully to get a meeting with Trump to persuade him to release the money — nearly $400 million intended to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
But Trump’s hold on the aid extended well into September, and Taylor said he found himself considering resignation. “I could not and would not defend such a policy,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s unspooling of events not only contradicted Sondland’s testimony, delivered last week, but also posed a test for Republicans who have defended Trump amid the fastmoving Ukraine saga. Many have cast evidence of a “quid pro quo” — U.S. aid used as leverage for political favors — as the red line that would cause Trump to lose their support.
But Taylor’s testimony made plain that, even as Sondland and others told him that the president was not seeking a “quid pro quo,” it was clear to him that the arrangement met the dictionary definition.
Some in the GOP were steadfast in backing Trump, who met Tuesday with members to discuss having the president’s “back” in the impeachment fight.
“There was no quid pro quo,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told reporters, insisting that over the six depositions and transcribed interviews that have taken place during the probe, “there is not evidence that there was any condition to the aid.”
But another lawmaker who attended the deposition, Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said, “Ultimately, there’s more questions. I think people will have to come back in.”
Democrats described Taylor’s testimony as “damning.”
“This is a sea change,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., a senior member of the House Oversight Committee who heard the testimony. “I think it could accelerate matters.”
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement that the president “has done nothing wrong — this is a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution. There was no quid pro quo.”
In his testimony, Taylor told lawmakers that on Sept. 8, after he had begun raising alarms about pressure on Zelensky, Sondland explained that Trump approached the foreign policy matter as a business proposition.
“Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”
Sondland told House investigators last week that he recalls “no discussions” with anyone at the State Department or White House about investigating Biden or his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma.