The stage is set for a volatile American spectacle — public impeachment hearings starting Wednesday targeting U.S. President Donald Trump and whether he abused his office to help himself politically.
The facts of the case are fairly straightforward, but the nuances are many and disputed.
Trump, in a rough transcript released by the White House, asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a late July call for "a favor." Trump wanted an investigation of his leading 2020 Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter's work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won, and not Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded.
At the time of the call, Trump was withholding $391 million in U.S. military aid that Kyiv desperately needed to help it fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.
Trump never mentioned a specific quid pro quo in the call — the military aid in exchange for the Biden investigation — and for weeks has denied a reciprocal tradeoff. He has described the call with Zelenskiy as "perfect."
But several U.S. diplomatic and national security officials have defied the Trump administration's efforts to keep them from testifying behind closed doors at a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives. They have recounted conversations they had with other U.S. officials who said Trump indeed intended to withhold the aid to Kyiv until he got a public statement from Zelenskiy that a probe to help him politically would be launched.
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The public hearings are set to open with testimony from William Taylor, a decorated war veteran and career diplomat who now is the top U.S. envoy in Ukraine. He told investigators in his closed-door session that while he had not talked directly with Trump about the military assistance, it was his "clear understanding" that Kyiv would not get the military aid unless it launched investigations that would help Trump politically.
He said that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had repeatedly told him that while Trump did not view the reciprocal deal as a quid pro quo, "I observed that, in order to move forward on the security assistance, the Ukrainians were told by Ambassador Sondland that they had to pursue the investigations."
Taylor concluded in the closed-door testimony, "That was my clear understanding, security assistance money would not come until" Zelenskiy "committed to pursue the investigation."
Another State Department official, George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, including Ukraine, also is set to testify Wednesday. He testified privately that Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, engaged in a smear campaign against Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch is scheduled to publicly testify next Friday. She was ordered back to Washington earlier this year and dismissed from her posting months before her tenure was set to end. Trump called her "bad news" in the call to Zelenskiy.
Some Trump allies, including Giuliani, named by Trump to oversee U.S. relations with Ukraine, felt she was an impediment to getting Ukraine to open the Biden investigation. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined overtures from career diplomats to defend her tenure in Kyiv.
Trump has derided the impeachment investigation with an array of invective, that it's a "hoax," a "scam" and just another attempt to undo his stunning 2016 upset election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton to a four-year term as the U.S. leader. He has derided those testifying against him as "Never Trumpers" or part of "Deep State holdovers" from the administration of his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama, even though some of the witnesses against him have served in both Republican and Democratic administrations or have been appointed by him.
Trump's normally staunch Republican supporters have been hard-pressed to settle on a cohesive defense of Trump's call, with some saying there could not have been a quid pro quo because Trump eventually released the aid to Kyiv in September without a public statement from Zelenskiy that a Biden investigation was under way.
Trump named Giuliani as the Ukraine overseer to the dismay of career State Department officials and even some Trump political allies.