The U.S. House Intelligence Committee begins public hearings in Democrats’ impeachment inquiry on Nov. 13.
Two witnesses will testify on the first day of the hearings: William Taylor, U.S. charge d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs. The testimonies start on 10 a.m. EST.
Next, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will testify on Nov. 15.
Taylor and Kent already testified in the impeachment inquiry behind the closed doors.
Read the transcript of Kent’s testimony from Oct. 15 and its analysis.
Read the transcript of Taylor’s testimony from Oct. 22.
Read the transcript of Yovanovitch’s testimony from Oct. 11.
Key updates and quotes from the hearing:
Democrat Adam Schiff opens up the televised hearing by outlining the case for impeaching President Donald J. Trump for abuse of power; Republican Devin Nunes counters saying it’s a political show without substance.
U.S. charge d’affaires in Ukraine Taylor in his opening statement: “I found a confusing and unusual arrangement for making U.S. policy toward Ukraine. There appeared to be two channels of U.S. policy-making and implementation, one regular and one highly irregular.”
The “irregular” channel, according to Taylor, included President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Taylor said that the Ukrainian government didn’t know that the White House withheld military aid allocated to Ukraine until Aug. 29.
When President Volodymyr Zelensky’s aide Andriy Yermak addressed Taylor, asking why the aid was withheld, Taylor could offer no explanation.
During a Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw between President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, Zelensky began the meeting asking about the withheld military aid. Pence didn’t reply, according to Taylor.
According to Taylor, U.S. President Donald Trump asked Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to E.U. about the status of potential investigations into the family of Joe Biden, Democratic Party frontrunner for the 2020 presidential election nomination.
Taylor’s unnamed aide overheard Trump on the phone with Sondland asking about the investigations and Sondland said the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.
Andriy Yermak, close aide to Zelensky, asked the U.S. for an official request to begin investigation against the Bidens and Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s private oil and gas company employing Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.
“There are two Ukraine stories,” Taylor said. “One is about impeachment, in which Ukraine is merely an object. There is another, a positive, bipartisan one. In it, Ukraine is a subject. It is about young people in a young nation, struggling to break free from its past, hoping that their new government will finally usher in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia.”
Taylor said that his understanding was that Trump wanted to put Zelensky “in a public box,” meaning that he wanted Zelensky to publicly commit to investigating Joe Biden and his son’s activities in Ukraine.
According to Taylor, John Bolton, then-Trump’s national security adviser, said, “I don’t want to be part of this drug deal,” after being a part of a meeting between Sondland and Oleksandr Danylyuk, then head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and Bolton’s Ukrainian counterpart.
Steve Castor, a Republican Counsel of the House Intelligence Committee, asked Taylor whether he thought that Trump was legitimately concerned with Ukraine, given that “there were certain elements in the Ukrainian establishment that opposed his candidacy in 2016.” Taylor said he didn’t know the answer to that. He pointed out that Trump said during the 2016 campaign that the annexation of Crimea by Russia can be legitimized. “That sentiment,” Taylor said, “is very inflammatory to all Ukrainians.”
Castor asked Taylor and Kent about Hunter Biden’s employment at Burisma Holdings as a member of the board in 2014-2019. Castor asked whether they thought it raised questions that Biden, who had no relevant qualifications, was employed and paid $50,000 at a gas extracting company. Kent and said they didn’t know of Hunter Biden’s qualifications or details of his employment. They also said they didn’t know whether he relocated to Ukraine for this job.
According to Kent, in 2016, Joe Biden asked then-President Petro Poroshenko to remove then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin because the latter had stalled a number of high profile anti-corruption cases, including the so-called Diamond Prosecutors case, in which two prosecutors were accused of taking bribes in diamonds.
“(Shokin) made his driver a prosecutor,” said Kent, referring to the fact that one of the so-called Diamond Prosecutors used to work for the prosecutor general as a driver.
Read more on the Diamond Prosecutors case.
Answering a line of questioning about why Ukrainian politicians might not like Ambassador Yovanovitch, Kent said: “You can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.”
Republican lawmakers pressed Ambassador Taylor that there was no extortion on Trump’s side because President Zelensky denied it in the July 25 call and because military aid was released to Ukraine without Zelensky having to open any investigation into the Bidens. “Zelensky didn’t do anything that Democrats claim he was coerced to,” said Republican John Ratcliffe.
Republican Brad Wenstrup said that the strong support came from the Trump administration, which released Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine in 2018, not the Obama administration.
Some new details on the role of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in the military aid issue.
“To the best of my understanding, the vice president was an advocate for the release of (military) assistance (to Ukraine),” Kent said.
Asked by Democrat Val Demings whether Giuliani was promoting U.S. interests or policy in Ukraine, both Kent and Taylor said no.
“I believe he was looking to dig up dirt against (Trump’s) potential rival in the next election cycle,” Kent said.
Taylor agreed with the statement.
