House Dems subpoena Energy Secretary Perry
of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; subsequent efforts by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to promote Ukraine-related conspiracies; as well as signals in meetings at the White House that Trump wanted the new government in Kyev to deliver material that might be politically damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Those concerns soared in the call’s aftermath, officials said. Within minutes, senior officials including national security adviser John Bolton were being pinged by subordinates about problems with what the president had said to Zelenskiy. Bolton and others scrambled to obtain a rough transcript that was already being “locked down” on a highly classified computer network.
Trump has said Perry teed up the July 25 call, in which Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was employed by a Ukrainian gas company.
A spokeswoman for Perry has said he wanted Trump to speak on energy matters with the Ukrainian leader as part of U.S. efforts to boost Western energy ties to Eastern Europe.
“Recently, public reports have raised questions about any role you may have played in conveying or reinforcing the president’s stark message to the Ukrainian president,” the three Democratic chairmen wrote. “These reports have also raised significant questions about your efforts to press Ukrainian officials to change the management structure at a Ukrainian state-owned energy company to benefit individuals involved with Rudy Giuliani’s push to get Ukrainian officials to interfere in our 2020 election.”
The Associated Press reported this week that a circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted their connections to Trump and his personal lawyer, Giuliani, as they sought to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s state-owned gas company last spring.
The plan hit a snag after Zelinskiy’s election, but Perry took up the effort to install a friendlier management team at the company, Naftogaz.
Perry attended Zelinskiy’s May 2019 inauguration as the administration’s senior representative and met privately with Zelinskiy. He has denied any wrongdoing.