William Taylor testifies about deep-seated push for Ukraine quid pro quo

Source: Politico | October 22, 2019 | Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney

Trump’s top Ukraine envoy faced questions about his concerns that Trump was withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

President Donald Trump’s top envoy to Ukraine told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday of intense efforts by administration officials to secure politically-motivated investigations of Trump’s rivals in exchange for a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president and critical military aid, according to sources in the room for the testimony.

William Taylor prompted sighs and gasps when he read a lengthy 15-page opening statement, two of the sources said.

Another person in the room said Taylor’s statement described “how pervasive the efforts were” among Trump’s allies to convince Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden and another probe centering on a debunked conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 election.

Taylor also described the extent to which military assistance to Ukraine and a potential White House meeting with Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart were tied to those investigations, the source added.

“The body language of the people hearing it was ‘holy s—,’ seriously,” Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said in reference to Taylor’s opening statement.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, characterized the testimony as a “sea change” that “could accelerate” the impeachment inquiry. Another lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, said it was “the most thorough accounting we’ve had of the timeline.”

“I’ll tell you, as a former State Department political appointee, in my experience the difference between career folks and political appointees is the career folks take very good notes,” Malinowski said, hinting that Taylor provided corroboration to back up his recollections.

……….

Taylor, who replaced U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch after her unceremonious ouster by Trump in May, raised alarms with colleagues on Sept. 1 in a text message exchange released earlier this month by the three committees spearheading the inquiry.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and [White House] meeting are conditioned on investigations?” he wondered, referring to a potential meeting between Trump and Zelensky.

Eight days later, Taylor’s concerns grew more urgent. In texts with two other diplomats, Taylor said it was “crazy” that military aid to Kyiv was being blocked in order to force “help with a political campaign.” Nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine was put on hold in late July by the White House but was released in September two weeks after POLITICO revealed that it was frozen. Taylor described the hold on aid as a “nightmare” and said it had already shaken Ukraine’s faith in the United States.

“The Russians love it. (And I quit.),” Taylor said of the prospect that the aid would be blocked even after Ukraine agreed to open Trump’s preferred investigations.

Another source said a phone call between Taylor and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was a key episode about which Taylor provided new information. That conversation came at Sondland’s request after Taylor, in one of the text messages released earlier this month, questioned whether the military assistance and possible White House meeting are “conditioned on investigations.”

“After today, Mr. Sondland is going to have some explaining to do,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) said.

……..

After Trump canceled a late August trip to Poland, where he was to meet Zelensky, the ambassadors again fretted about building a relationship between Trump and Zelensky. Volker said he hoped Vice President Mike Pence would attend in Trump’s place and set up a White House visit for Zelensky. He also said he hoped Energy Secretary Rick Perry would join.

But Taylor, on Sept. 1, worried that the White House visit itself would be conditioned on Trump’s demand for Ukraine to investigate Biden as well as an unfounded conspiracy theory that Ukraine — not Russia — interfered in the 2016 election.

As Taylor’s concerns about a quid pro quo grew more explicit, Sondland sought to put him at ease.

“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” Sondland texted on Sept. 9, urging his colleagues to stop the text message exchanges.

Last week, Sondland told House investigators that he sent this message after speaking directly to Trump and that he could not speak to whether it was true.

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