A crucial witness offered dramatic new testimony Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s preoccupation with having Ukraine investigate his political rivals, as Democrats opened impeachment hearings designed to persuade a bitterly divided nation that the president tried to coerce a foreign power to help him win reelection.
In a nationally televised hearing that unfolded in an ornate hearing room near the Capitol, William Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, testified that he was told that Trump cared more about “investigations of Biden” — former Vice President Joe Biden — than he did about Ukraine. The revelation, as Congress began the third set of presidential impeachment hearings in modern history, placed Trump at the centre of what Taylor described in vivid detail as a “highly irregular” effort to place the president’s political interests at the centre of US policy toward Ukraine.
The proceedings, inside the wood-and-plasterwork Ways and Means Committee room adorned with blue and gold, moved into the public’s direct glare an epic clash between Trump and Democrats over impeachment that has so far unfolded in private. And they previewed the intensely partisan battle to come as the president and his defenders raged against an impeachment process they called unfair and illegitimate.
Taylor offered a new detail in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about how Trump’s preoccupation with investigating the former vice president and his family had affected his actions toward Ukraine.
Taylor said that a member of his staff overheard a telephone conversation in which the president mentioned “the investigations” to Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, who told him “that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.” After the call, the aide asked Sondland what the president thought of Ukraine, in Taylor’s telling. The ambassador “responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.”
He was referring to Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who Taylor described as the leader of a “highly irregular” policymaking channel on Ukraine that ran counter to goals of long-standing US policy. The episode was not included in Taylor’s interview with impeachment investigators last month, because, he said, he was not aware of it at the time.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, quickly seized on it to try to put the president’s concern with the investigations into context.
“I take it the import of that is he cares more about that than he does about Ukraine?” Schiff asked.
“Yes, sir,” Taylor responded.
Much of the rest of Taylor’s testimony was consistent with what he told the panel previously, an account that included vivid details of how he discovered that Trump was conditioning “everything” about the US relationship with Ukraine — including needed military aid and a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president — on the country’s willingness to commit publicly to investigations of his political rivals. His testimony made it clear that the Ukrainians were well aware of the prerequisites at the time.
The revelation came as Democrats opened the first public impeachment hearing in more than two decades, moving into the public’s direct glare a historic clash between Trump and Democrats that has so far unfolded in private.
Taylor and George Kent, a senior State Department official who is also testifying, were seated next to each other at the witness table. Both men received subpoenas Wednesday morning to appear.
Kent testified that Giuliani conducted a smear campaign against the US ambassador to Ukraine and led an effort to “gin up politically motivated investigations,” according to a copy of his opening statement.
Kent said that he concluded by mid-August that Giuliani’s efforts to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to open investigations into Trump’s rivals “were now infecting US engagement with Ukraine, leveraging President Zelenskiy’s desire for a White House meeting.”
Kent also assailed what he called a “campaign to smear” US officials serving in Ukraine, which succeeded with the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine.
“It was unexpected, and most unfortunate however, to watch some Americans — including those who allied themselves with corrupt Ukrainians in pursuit of private agendas — launch attacks on dedicated public servants advancing US interests in Ukraine,” Kent said in his opening statement. “In my opinion, those attacks undermined US and Ukrainian national interests and damaged our critical bilateral relationship.”
