Impeachment Witnesses Sought by GOP Instead Undercut Trump Case
Impeachment Witnesses Sought by GOP Instead Undercut Trump Case
(Bloomberg) -- Two witnesses Republicans were counting on to undercut the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump instead may have bolstered the Democrats’ case, adding to evidence of the president’s insistence that Ukraine investigate the Bidens and setting up dramatic testimony on Wednesday.
Timothy Morrison, a former senior director for the National Security Council, in his testimony on Tuesday put Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, once again at the center of Trump’s maneuvering on Ukraine.
Sondland, who’s scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday morning, will face tough questions from both Democrats and Republicans over his personal interactions with Trump regarding Ukraine.
Morrison recounted an episode from September in which Sondland pulled aside a top aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to tell him the country’s prosecutor general needed to make a statement about investigations “as a condition” of unfreezing $391 million in U.S. security assistance. “I was concerned about what Ambassador Sondland was saying about investigations,” Morrison said.
Sitting next to Morrison, Kurt Volker, the former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, testified that Republican suspicions about former Vice President Joe Biden -- and claims that he pressed Ukraine to fire a prosecutor to fend off an investigation of his son Hunter -- were unfounded and “not credible.”
The testimony undercut key messages that Republicans have put forward about the weakness of the impeachment inquiry, and were particularly damaging because it was Republicans who had requested that Volker and Morrison appear.
But Republicans said no witnesses had asserted that Trump engaged in bribery or extortion, as Democrats have claimed.
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement on Tuesday evening that “with the Democrats’ poll-tested
‘quid-pro-quo’ and ‘bribery’ narratives in shambles, the American public should not be forced to endure this charade for one more second.”
Morrison and Volker testified in the second half of the day, after two other witnesses detailed their concerns over the July 25 phone call in which Zelenskiy started to ask for more U.S. weapons, only to have Trump interrupt and ask for a “favor” -- investigations of the Bidens and the discredited theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 campaign and did so at the behest of Democrats.
The dispute at the heart of the inquiry is whether the president committed an impeachable offense by making those investigations a condition for an in-person White House meeting that Zelenskiy desired and for the release of military aid to resist Russian-backed aggression. Trump has said there was no such “quid pro quo” and that the July phone call was “perfect.”
Tuesday’s witnesses and those who appeared last week have placed Sondland at the heart of the impeachment drama, describing an Oregon hotelier-turned-diplomat who leveraged his relationship with Trump to press Ukraine for the probes demanded by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
In closed-door testimony, Morrison and other witnesses had described Sondland as a “free radical” who may have been freelancing policy and exaggerating his access to the president. White House and State Department officials acknowledge that Sondland’s testimony will be crucial to the strength of the Democrats’ case.
Tuesday’s witnesses sought to distance themselves from Sondland. Volker said he wasn’t aware of a now-famous phone call with Trump in which Sondland said Zelenskiy would agree to an investigation.
Sondland said that Trump only cared about “big stuff” that benefited him, “like the Biden investigation,” according to the testimony of another State Department employee, David Holmes. That appears to contradict testimony last month in which Sondland said he “never heard the word ‘Biden’ mentioned with aid.”
The credibility of key witnesses supportive of Trump has come under scrutiny. Both Volker and Sondland have cited episodes they failed to mention initially in their closed-door testimony, saying other witnesses had jogged their memory.
Benefit of the Doubt
Tuesday also featured appearances by two other Trump administration aides, Jennifer Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. Democrats were betting the pair’s testimony would be damning to Trump because both of them were listening in on the July 25 call.
Both witnesses described in unsparing terms their concerns about what Trump said, and said they had come forward out of a sense of duty and concern about America’s national security.
But they gave the administration the benefit of the doubt on other aspects of Ukraine policy the Democrats asked them about, such as whether the partial transcript of the call that the White House eventually released was handled improperly.
Republican lawmakers were adamant that Morrison and Volker undercut the Democrats’ case, arguing that Trump had ultimately supplied weapons to Ukraine that the Obama administration had refused to provide and that it was reasonable, given Ukraine’s history of corruption, for the president to be wary about sending more aid there.
Under questioning from Representative Mike Turner of Ohio, Volker said Trump’s concerns on aid were valid. He also said Trump never told him he would block assistance to Ukraine if the investigations he sought weren’t undertaken and never told him that conditions were placed on the money.
“Pretty much, Ambassador Volker, you just took apart their entire case,” Turner said.
Morrison also disputed testimony by Vindman earlier in the day, saying that unlike the Army officer, he didn’t believe Trump had brought up the Biden investigation as a demand in the call with Zelenskiy.
‘Right Matters’
Vindman, who appeared in his dress uniform bristling with medals, faced sharp questions from Republicans. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio suggested he had leaked confidential information.
“I never did, never would. That is preposterous that I would do that,” Vindman said.
Asked later why he decided to come forward, Vindman said “because this is America, this is the country I’ve served and defended, that all of my brothers have served and here, right matters.”
--With assistance from Billy House, Laura Litvan and Steven T. Dennis.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert, John Harney
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