Pressure is mounting on U. S. President Donald Trump as diplomats continued to testify in front of U. S. House of Representatives committees this week, presenting overwhelming evidence of abuse of power by Trump and his inner circle.
This week’s depositions are the last to be held behind closed doors as the Democrat-controlled House prepares for public hearings.
On Oct. 29, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman, a career servicemen and top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (NSC), gave his testimony in front of the Democratic Party-led House impeachment committee.
The New York Times reported on Oct. 30 that Vindman told the impeachment committee that the White House transcript of the infamous July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky omitted words and phrases crucial to the investigation and that his attempts to include the missing elements failed.
In his prewritten opening statement, which was made public, Vindman wrote that Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, pressured Oleksandr Danylyuk, then head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, to begin investigating Joe Biden, the former U.S. vice president and Trump’s potential opponent in the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential elections.
“The meeting proceeded well until Ukrainians broached the subject of a meeting between the two presidents,” wrote Vindman.
A day after Vindman’s testimony, Christopher Anderson, former special advisor for Ukraine negotiations, and his successor Catherine Croft also testified in front of the House impeachment committee.
According to Croft, former Republican Party member of Congress-turned-lobbyist Robert Livingston was seeking the removal of U. S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, whom Livingston called an “Obama holdover” associated with George Soros, the Hungarian-American financier and philanthropist with a record of donating to Democratic political candidates.
Croft also confirmed that, a week before the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had placed an informal hold on $391.5 million in security assistance to Ukraine.
“The only reason given was that the order came at the direction of the president,” said Croft.
During the phone call, Trump pressured Zelensky to open investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was paid as much as $50,000 per month to serve on the board of directors at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian oil and gas company that was previously investigated for corruption.
Trump also pressured Ukraine to open investigations into allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election — allegations that have been debunked by journalists and government officials on multiple occasions.
Text messages between Sondland and then-U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker show that the president’s team made the release of aid to Ukraine conditional on the investigations.
Volker and Sondland testified before the House earlier this month.
Amid Republican Party dissatisfaction that the hearings are being held behind closed doors, on Oct. 31 the Democratic Party passed a resolution in the U. S. House of Representatives to move to the next phase of the impeachment inquiry — public hearings.
Missing parts
Vindman, born in Kyiv and raised in the U.S. since the age of three, is the first official questioned by the impeachment committee who listened to the July 25 phone call, which is the centerpiece of the impeachment probe.
Vindman said he isn’t the whistleblower who first filed a formal complaint about the call, but he “did convey certain concerns internally to national security officials in accordance with decades of experience and obligation to operate within the chain of command.”
Vindman also said Sondland spearheaded the official channels that helped Trump pressure Ukraine into investigating his political opponents.
“I stated to Ambassador Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security,” Vindman said.
Trump swiftly attacked Vindman, a war veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart, over social media, calling him a “Never Trumper” and accusing him of lying.
“Was he on the same call that I was? Can’t be possible! Please ask him to read the transcript of the call,” wrote Trump on Twitter.
Trump’s comments received backlash even from his supporters.
However, Trump and Vindman might actually have been talking about different transcripts.
According to The New York Times, which cites three anonymous sources familiar with the deposition, Vindman said that the transcript omitted Trump’s assertions that there are recordings of Biden talking about corruption in Ukraine and an explicit mention by Zelensky of Burisma Holdings.
The Biden recording might refer to an infamous 2018 video in which Biden brags of influencing the dismissal of Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin.
Trump has accused Biden of pressuring Ukraine to fire the country’s top prosecutor to help his son Hunter escape prosecution. However, Hunter Biden wasn’t facing prosecution, and Shokin’s removal was demanded by lawmakers, anticorruption activists and Ukraine’s foreign donors.
Shokin was fired in 2016.
According to The New York Times, Vindman said in his testimony that he attempted to change the transcript to add the missing parts, and while some excerpts were included, the two mentioned above were left out.
Trump’s obsession
In separate depositions, Anderson and Croft, two of Volker’s top aides, also offered insight into the extent of Trump’s reliance on unofficial diplomatic channels and his general attitude toward Ukraine.
Croft said that lobbyist Livingston called her on multiple occasions, pressuring the National Security Council to assist with the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch.
“It was not clear to me at the time — or now — at whose direction or at whose expense Livingston was seeking the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch,” Croft said.
“I documented these calls and told my boss, Fiona Hill, and George Kent, who was in Kyiv at the time,” said Croft. “I am not aware of any action that was taken in response.”
Kent, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, and Hill, the former top advisor on Russia in the White House, both testified in mid-October.
Hill accused Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, of running shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that circumvented U.S. state officials, including Yovanovitch.
Shadow policy
Livingston was a longtime Republican Party representative from Louisiana before he left office in 1999 amid a scandal involving an extramarital affair.
He became a D.C. lobbyist, with Ukrainian clients, including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and UKRMETALURGPROM, a group of companies uniting Ukraine’s largest steel producers: Metinvest, owned by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, and Ferrexpo, owned by oligarch Kostyantin Zhevago, who was accused of laundering Hr 2.5 billion ($100 million) by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
Livingston and Giuliani weren’t the only non-officials linked to the Republican Party’s efforts to remove Yovanovitch.
In early October, two Florida-based businessmen and close associates of Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were charged by a grand jury with campaign fraud. The two were accused of paying an unnamed U.S. representative to help remove Yovanovitch from office.
Yovanovitch, who testified before Congress on Oct. 11, said that “corrupt interests in Ukraine” led to her sacking by Trump.
“Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president,” Yovanovitch said, “I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”
Both Croft and Anderson confirmed Giuliani’s extensive reach in government affairs, and Anderson stated that top U.S. diplomats working with Ukraine had to contain the damage done by Giuliani’s public statements.
“In an effort to counter the negative narrative sparked by Yovanovitch’s withdrawal and Giuliani’s statements, we pushed for a high-level delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration,” wrote Anderson.
Anderson also said that during a June 18 meeting at the Department of Energy, “there were discussions… about how to address Giuliani’s continued calls for a corruption investigation.”
Croft said that Giuliani was in constant talks with Volker.
Anderson’s testimony also shined light on Trump’s attitude toward Ukraine long before the July 25 phone call.
On Nov. 25, 2018, Russia attacked and seized Ukrainian military vessels with 25 sailors on board heading to Mariupol, Ukraine’s port on the Azov Sea.
“While my colleagues at the State Department quickly prepared a statement condemning Russia for its escalation, senior officials in the White House blocked it from being issued,” wrote Anderson.
“Directly and indirectly — President Trump described Ukraine as a corrupt country,” wrote Croft.
