Must Know Impeachment Details for this Week
(Ambassador for the European Union Gordon Sondland arriving for his testimony on Capitol Hill during the impeachment inquiry of President Trump.)
This morning, investigators in the Trump impeachment inquiry will take public testimony from Jennifer Williams, advisor to Mike Pence, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who serves as the Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council. In the afternoon, the Committee will hear from Ambassador Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, a White House aide with the National Security Council focusing on Europe and Russia policy.
On Wednesday morning, Congress will hear public testimony from from Ambassador Gordon Sondland who has a lot of explaining to do at this point after David Holmes gave direct sworn testimony that contradicts several of Sondland’s previous claims. In addition to the numerous accounts that Sondland was much more involved in orchestrating the quid pro quo than he led investigators to believe, we now have first hand accounts of how Sondland kept Trump appraised of his efforts to get Ukraine to launch an investigation into Joe Biden.
Sondland also told Congress during his previous deposition that he was not aware of any attempt to launch an inquiry into Biden specifically, despite the pressure applied to Ukraine by the Trump administration. Both David Holmes and Bill Taylor have now given testimony that directly contradicts the premise and it is expected that we will get more detail on these events this week. Given that Sondland will now be sworn in for a hearing that will be public, it will be interesting to see how he changes his position on all of these issues on Wednesday.
(Ambassador Gordon Sondland arriving for his testimony on Capitol Hill in October.)
On Wednesday afternoon, investigators will take testimony from Laura Cooper and David Hale, who both previously testified in closed-door depositions. The transcript of testimony from Hale was just recently released (see below) and it is expected that he will describe the way in which the State Department abandoned former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch after Trump made disparaging comments about her. Hale will likely provide details to the public about how Rudy Giuliani was really directing Secretary Pompeo’s decisions at the State Department and how little Pompeo did to defend his people.
Mark Sandy, Office of Management and Budget official, also testified in a closed-door hearing on Saturday, and this is important to note, because Sandy is the first official at O.M.B. to break ranks by showing up to testify. He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade, under presidents of both parties, and could potentially fill in and confirm critical details on why the military aid to Ukraine was not released earlier. It is expected that the transcript of his testimony will be released soon to provide more details surrounding the timing of the release of the Ukrainian aid and what kind of cover story was used in its delay.
Holmes Implicates Trump and Sondland More
(David Holmes, a State Department official and aide to Bill Taylor, arriving for a closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill on November 15, 2019.)
David Holmes, a counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, testified this weekend in a closed-door hearing and is scheduled to testify publicly this week. During his testimony, Holmes read an opening statement to the committees that confirmed he had first hand knowledge that Trump intended the quid pro quo, that Sondland’s testimony that he didn’t know about the investigation involving the Bidens was a lie and that Trump was a part of the plan to pressure Ukraine during the most critical steps.
According to reports, Holmes confirmed he overheard a July 26 phone call between President Trump and Ambassador Sondland in which Trump asked if Ukraine would investigate Biden. Holmes told investigators that Sondland replied yes and that he was able to hear all of this because Sondland held the phone away from his ear because Trump was talking so loudly. According to Holmes’ opening statement, Holmes testified that "Sondland told Trump that [President Zelensky] loves your ass” and then he heard President Trump ask, “So, he's gonna do the investigation?” Holmes stated that, “Ambassador Sondland replied that he's gonna do it, adding that President Zelensky will do anything you ask him to."
Holmes’ testimony undermines Sondland’s previous statement when he claimed not to know about Trump and Giuliani’s interest in investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian company that employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. In his previous deposition, Sondland claimed that he had pushed for an investigation into Burisma Holdings, which had employed Hunter Biden, but that he didn’t know there was any specific connection to the Bidens.
Holmes’ opening statement directly contradicts this when he speaks about a conversation with Sondland on July 26 saying, “I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.” Sondland previously testified under oath that, “I did not understand, until much later, that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the President’s 2020 reelection campaign.”
Holmes also revealed in his opening statement that former Ambassador Bill Taylor told him about a June 28 call that he had with President Zelensky and the “three amigos” — Sondland, Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. In that call Taylor told Holmes that “it was made clear that some action on a Burisma/Biden investigation was a precondition for an Oval Office meeting.”
Holmes was also able to quash the argument that Trump had no personal working knowledge of the quid pro quo and and was not personally involved like some members of his administration. But Holmes explained in his statement that “I came to realize I had firsthand knowledge regarding certain events on July 26 that had not otherwise been reported and that those events potentially bore on the question of whether the president did, in fact, have knowledge that those officials were using the levers of our diplomatic power to induct the new Ukrainian president to announce the opening of a particular criminal investigation.”
Hale Confirms Giuliani’s Level of Involvement at State
Testimony from David Hale, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, from Oct 6 was just released. In his testimony, Hale stated that he thought Marie Yovanovitch was doing a good job at her post and that he was the one who asked her to extend her assignment there. When discussing the events with Ukraine, Hale said it became “more and more obvious that this was an unusual set of things that were happening” and that Rudy Giuliani “was involved.”
Hale also said that Secretary Pompeo was the “most likely” person to have made the decision not to support Ambassador Yovanovitch after Trump’s comments about her were released. Hale also told investigators that the State Department did not put out a statement in her defense because Hale did not want to “fuel further negative reaction.”
Hale further testified that the “implication” of Giuliani’s statements about Ambassador Yovanovitch “was that this was a roundabout way the President was trying to get rid of the Ambassador through this smear campaign.” Hale said he “found it very hard to understand why a President of the United States would do it that way.” Mr. Hale also explained how much Giuliani was driving things within the State Department by telling the committees that after Secretary Pompeo spoke with Rudy Giuliani about Ambassador Yovanovitch, the State Department maintained its decision of not issuing a statement in support of her.
For everything you need to know about the impeachment schedule, including important summaries and links to every critical document, you can always check in with the Impeachment Testimony Cheat Sheet — I update it as new information is available and provide dates several weeks out so that you can prepare.
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Amee Vanderpool writes the “Shero” Newsletter and is an attorney, contributor to Playboy Magazine, analyst for BBC radio and Director of The Inanna Project. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.