WASHINGTON — A report released on Dec. 3 by the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee, spearheading the impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump, details a mass of evidence that he abused his position to pressure Ukraine to provide dirt on a political rival. It also provides startling new evidence of how deeply involved Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was in what the report calls the president’s efforts to “subvert” U.S. foreign policy for his own benefit.
The 300-page “Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report” chronicles the first phase of the proceedings that Democrats hope will remove Trump from office.
The House, the lower chamber of Congress, is dominated by the Democratic Party and its committees are likewise composed proportionately with Republican Party members forming the minority. The Intelligence Committee, as expected, voted on the evening of Dec. 3 along strictly party lines to approve the report and send it to the House Judiciary Committee, which commences its own investigations on Dec. 4 as the next phase of the impeachment inquiry.
Much of the content of the Democrat-authored report was already known to those who followed evidence gathered over the last two months in closed and televised public hearings by the intelligence committee, chaired by Representative Adam B. Schiff of California.
That centered on a July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a partial transcript of which was released in September by the White House.
An anonymous White House whistleblower brought the call to the attention of Congress because they were alarmed that Trump was trying to trade $400 million in U.S. military aid that Ukraine badly needed for defense against Russian aggression and a White House visit for Zelensky in return for Kyiv opening an investigation into discredited allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden had improperly forced the firing of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to quash a corruption investigation that might have implicated his son, Hunter Biden.
Most Ukrainians, the American Embassy in Kyiv and other foreign representatives and financial institutions helping Ukraine, regarded Shokin as deeply corrupt and had long urged his sacking. Shokin was not, as the fake narrative alleges, investigating a dodgy Ukrainian energy company that had employed Hunter Biden.
Joe Biden is a frontrunner to gain the Democratic party nomination to run against Trump in next year’s presidential election and Trump apparently views him as one of his toughest rivals. The Trump camp believed that if Ukraine opened an investigation against Biden it would undermine his election chances. Evidence gathered from some of the 17 witnesses who testified before the intelligence committee showed that Trump was not interested if Ukraine actually pursued a serious investigation into the Bidens – father and son – but only that Zelensky should publicly commit to it.
Trump’s other demand was that Kyiv should open an investigation into allegations, also long ago debunked, that Ukraine tried to interfere in 2016 to damage Trump’s presidential bid. Trump is bitter that America’s intelligence community unanimously agreed that Russia devoted huge resources to meddle in the 2016 election to skew it in Trump’s favor.
Trump’s supporters, led by Giuliani, have tried to diminish Russia’s influence in 2016 and instead have propagated a false “Ukraine interference” narrative. That, in turn, has been traced to press conference musings by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin trying to deflect overwhelming evidence of the Kremlin’s manipulation of social media and theft of huge hordes of emails from the American government and Democratic party computers.
The report writes: “The impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection.
“In furtherance of this scheme, President Trump conditioned official acts on a public announcement by the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, of politically-motivated investigations, including one into President Trump’s domestic political opponent [Joe Biden].
“In pressuring President Zelensky to carry out his demand, President Trump withheld a White House meeting desperately sought by the Ukrainian President, and critical U.S. military assistance to fight Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. ”
The report states that when the Ukrainian government discovered that aid and the visit were being withheld, “Zelensky expressed concern that even an appearance of wavering support from the United States for Ukraine could embolden Russia.”
The Democrats assert that Trump’s “scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential re-election campaign.”
Referring to Trump’s July 25 phone conversation with Zelensky, who said Ukraine would like to buy more American Javelin anti-armor missiles, the report says that “alone is stark evidence of misconduct; a demonstration of the President’s prioritization of his personal political benefit over the national interest. In response to President Zelensky’s appreciation for vital U.S. military assistance, which President Trump froze without explanation, President Trump asked for “a favor though”: two specific investigations [the Bidens and “Ukraine interference”] designed to assist his reelection efforts.
The report goes on to say: “Our investigation determined that this telephone call was neither the start nor the end of President Trump’s efforts to bend U.S. foreign policy for his personal gain. Rather, it was a dramatic crescendo within a months-long campaign driven by President Trump in which senior U.S. officials, including the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Acting Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Energy, and others were either knowledgeable of or active participants in an effort to extract from a foreign nation the personal political benefits sought by the President.”
Some of those that testified were among persons, such as U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and U.S. former special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, that the investigation identified as acting on Giuliani’s direction to persuade Zelensky to agree to Trump’s demands.
Sondland told the inquiry that he and Volker were told by Trump to deal with Giuliani on Ukraine and understood that by acting on the lawyer’s instructions they were doing the president’s bidding. Sondland said he realized that not only was a White House visit for Zelensky dependent on his agreeing to lend credence to the discredited Biden and “Ukraine interference” allegations by opening investigations into them but that American military aid would be withheld until Trump go that he wanted.
The report outlines how America’s ambassador to Ukraine since 2016, Marie Yovanovitch, was “unceremoniously” removed from office after a smear campaign orchestrated by Giuliani and aided by Shokin’s replacement as Prosecutor General, Yuri Lutsenko, who numerous witnesses, including Yovanovitch, also labeled as corrupt. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, said the report, testified in praising Ambassador Yovanovitch: “You can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.”
It has emerged that Giuliani was not only pressing Kyiv for the investigations Trump wanted but was involved in some opaque business dealings of his own. Two of his Soviet-born business associates, both American citizens, are facing various charges after being arrested by the FBI as they tried to fly out of the U.S. on one-way tickets.
Yovanovitch’s successor, the current acting ambassador, William Taylor, told the inquiry about how Giuliani had run a shadow American foreign policy – “an irregular channel” – contrary to official American policy. Taylor had been appalled to discover that Trump was conditioning military aid for Ukraine on Zelensky delivering investigations to help Trump’s reelection.
The report says the many different testimonies, including by people like Sondland, who donated $ one million to Trump’s inauguration fund and who have not an axe to grind with Trump, largely coincided and were overwhelming proof of the “president’s misconduct.”
Despite Trump’s schemes most senior officials of all policymaking agencies had been shocked to discover aid was being blocked by Trump and supported the release of funding. Ukraine experts at the U.S. Department of Defense, the State Department, and the National Security Council argued that it was in the national security interest of the United States to continue to support Ukraine.
One senior NSC official and longtime Republican, Timothy Morrison, testified: “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”
The report emphasized obstruction of Congress by Trump and his Administration who tried to prevent the intelligence committee from obtaining documentary evidence and testimony: “A dozen witnesses followed President Trump’s orders, defying voluntary requests and lawful subpoenas, and refusing to testify. The White House, Department of State, Department of Defense, Office of Management and Budget, and Department of Energy refused to produce a single document in response to our subpoenas.”
The committee says Trump’s scheme to use Ukraine to undermine Biden “was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
Sondland testified that “everyone was in the loop” on plans to trade the White House meeting for the political investigations to benefit Trump’s 2020 election campaign.
In fact, at a press conference weeks after public revelations about the scheme, Mr. Mulvaney publicly acknowledged that the President directly tied the hold on military aid to his desire to get Ukraine to conduct a political investigation.
He justified that by saying: “We do that all the time with foreign policy. I have news for everybody: get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
The Democrats praised the witnesses for their courage in defying attempts by the administration to prevent them from testifying: “The report ….. was only possible because of their sense of duty and devotion to their country and its Constitution.”
The committee warned that the implications of Trump’s behavior went far beyond Ukraine: “The damage the President has done to our relationship with a key strategic partner will be remedied over time, and Ukraine continues to enjoy strong bipartisan support in Congress. But the damage to our system of checks and balances, and to the balance of power within our three branches of government, will be long-lasting and potentially irrevocable if the President’s ability to stonewall Congress goes unchecked.”
Schiff wrote in the report that America’s independence war military leader and first president, George Washington, warned of a moment when “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Schiff said that perhaps the biggest danger for America’s democracy came from Trump and his allies “making a comprehensive attack on the very idea of fact and truth. How can democracy survive without acceptance of a common set of experiences? ……America remains the beacon of democracy and opportunity for freedom-loving people around the world. What we do will determine what they see and whether America remains a nation committed to the rule of law.”
The report sheds new light on Giuliani’s role in Trump’s plan to leverage military aid and a White House visit for Zelensky in return for the investigations. It reiterates how Trump’s then-National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton told a colleague that Giuliani was a “hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up.”
The inquiry described how it uncovered telephone company records of a large number of phone calls between Giuliani, his associates and senior White House and administration officials during the time Giuliani was trying to oust Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine.
In the spring and summer of 2019, Giuliani contacted, among others, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton; Representative Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee itself.
The phone records show Giuliani talked some six times to persons on a number thought to belong to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget that froze the military assistance for 55 days on Trump’s orders.
Most intriguingly the records show that Giuliani made many calls to a number at the White House designated as number “1.” That has given rise to speculation that “1” is Trump and that such plentiful direct communications would indicate that the president, who is now seeking to distance himself from his lawyer, was himself deeply involved in extorting political dirt from Ukraine.
Giuliani denied to journalists that he was involved in freezing assistance to Ukraine. Trump and the White House have refused to testify or take part in the inquiry proceedings while at the same time complaining they had no access to them and the process was unfair. After the report was released, the president called Schiff “deranged” and “sick” and said Democrats were trying to overturn the 2016 election results through a “hoax” impeachment inquiry because they were afraid of losing next’ year’s election
The House Judiciary Committee will, after completing its hearings, recommend to the full House whether or not to impeach the president. The formal impeachment charges are expected to include abuse of power, obstruction of justice and contempt of Congress. Only a simple majority, which the Democratic Party has in the House, is neeed to impeach Trump and that, say most observers, is likely to happen.
However, any impeachment trial will be held in the Senate where the Republicans have the majority. Until now Republicans have staunchly defended Trump and Dec. 3 issued their own 123-page report rebutting the Democrats’ report and repeating the Trump narratives that echo Kremlin talking points that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 American elections. Two-thirds of the 100-strong Senate would need to vote, probably in January, to convict Trump and few believe the numbers will be found to do that.
