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Trump Wanted Ukraine to Tie Biden, Clinton and Probe, Envoy Said

Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton.”

Trump Wanted Ukraine to Tie Biden, Clinton and Probe, Envoy Said
U.S. President Donald J. Trump pauses as he speaks during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. (Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- The message from the White House was clear: Ukraine’s new president needed to announce his country would investigate a company tied to Joe Biden’s son and an unsubstantiated theory about Ukraine-supported interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Investigations, Biden and Clinton” was the three-word shorthand being pushed from President Donald Trump through channels onto Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, testified a senior State Department official, George Kent, to House impeachment committees last month.

Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,” Kent testified he was told, according to a transcript of his testimony released Thursday.

“I think the anticipation or the hope was that sending that signal would clear the way for both the White House visit as well as the resumption or the clearing of the administrative hold on security assistance” to Ukraine, Kent said.

Trump Wanted Ukraine to Tie Biden, Clinton and Probe, Envoy Said

When asked if the word “Clinton,” referring to Democrat Hillary Clinton, was shorthand for 2016, meaning an investigation into the 2016 campaign, Kent said: “2016, yes.”

Kent didn’t have first-hand knowledge of Trump’s words. He said he was describing what a colleague told him about a conversation Trump had with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland where the demand for Zelenskiy was outlined.

Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s European and Eurasian Bureau, said the Trump administration had two points of leverage for that demand: an Oval Office meeting for the newly elected Ukrainian president and a hold on military aid authorized by Congress.

Trump Wanted Ukraine to Tie Biden, Clinton and Probe, Envoy Said

Kent said he wrote a memo in August noting “concerns that there was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were injurious to the rule of law, both Ukraine and the U.S.”

Kent has emerged as a top witness for House Democrats in their impeachment inquiry against Trump. He is already scheduled to be one of the two witnesses in the first open impeachment hearing held by the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

‘Full of Lies’

Kent’s other main concern was the effort to slander Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. According to the transcript, Kent said Ukrainian officials used Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to get “revenge” on Yovanovitch for her anti-corruption work.

Giuliani engaged in a campaign “full of lies and incorrect information” against the ambassador, Kent said. Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post in May.

Trump Wanted Ukraine to Tie Biden, Clinton and Probe, Envoy Said

Kent also described the involvement of Giuliani’s business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who subsequently were charged in the U.S. with illegally funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to U.S. officials and a political action committee that backed Trump.

Parnas and Fruman “started reaching out actively to undermine Ambassador Yovanovitch, starting in 2018 with a meeting with former Congressman Pete Sessions on May 9th, 2018,” Kent said, according to the transcript.

Kent noted that on the same day, Sessions, then the House Rules Committee chairman, “wrote a letter to Secretary Pompeo impugning Ambassador Yovanovitch’s loyalty and suggesting that she be removed.”

“And others also in 2018 were engaged in an effort to undermine her standing by claiming that she was disloyal,” Kent told the committees.

Also involved in the effort was the then-prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, who was under pressure from the U.S. State Department for “essentially colluding with a corrupt official to undermine the investigation” into a ring that was selling fake Ukrainian passports, according to Kent.

Lutsenko “vowed revenge, and provided information” to Giuliani “in hopes that he would spread it and lead to her removal,” Kent said, referring to Yovanovitch. He said Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov told him that Lutsenko had made a private trip to New York to meet with Giuliani “to throw mud” at Yovanovitch and others in the State Department.

Lutsenko resigned under pressure from Zelenskiy in August.

‘Three Amigos’

Kent also testified about Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s designation of a three-person team -- Sondland, then-Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry -- to help Giuliani’s shadow diplomacy effort. Kent recalled these three came to call themselves as the “three amigos.”

Trump Wanted Ukraine to Tie Biden, Clinton and Probe, Envoy Said

Sondland was one of the leading figures pushing for Zelenskiy’s public statement regarding investigations of Biden and Clinton, according to Kent’s testimony.

There were indications that the Ukrainians understood what they were being asked to deliver.

Kent relayed an account of a mid-September conversation Taylor and Volker had with Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Zelenskiy. Kent wasn’t part of the discussion, but he said Taylor filled him in over breakfast the next day. Volker told Yermak that the U.S. didn’t think opening an investigation of former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, who Zelenskiy defeated earlier in the year, was appropriate.

“And then Andriy Yermak said: ‘What? You mean the type of investigations you’re pushing for us to do on Biden and Clinton?’” Kent testified. “And at that point Kurt Volker did not respond.”

Republicans on the three committees leading the impeachment inquiry highlighted the fact that Kent didn’t have firsthand information about Trump’s requests, but rather relied on the recollection of people who spoke with him.

“The George Kent transcript was just released & once again there’s ZERO 1st hand info of US $ to Ukraine being linked to specific investigations,” Representative Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican, tweeted Thursday.

--With assistance from Nick Wadhams.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.