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White House Chose Back-Channel Trio to Skirt Envoys on Ukraine

White House Chose Trio to Conduct Ukraine Policy, Congress Told

(Bloomberg) -- The White House designated a three-person team to bypass formal U.S.-Ukraine policy following a meeting organized by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, a senior State Department official told House impeachment investigators.

The official, George Kent, said he didn’t personally attend that meeting on May 23, but department officials were informed afterward that then-Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, would be in charge of the policy.

White House Chose Back-Channel Trio to Skirt Envoys on Ukraine

Neither Secretary of State Michael Pompeo nor other officials who would normally form the diplomatic channels of American foreign policy in Ukraine were to be involved, according to a recounting of Kent’s testimony by Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia, a senior Democrat on the Oversight and Reform Committee, one of the three panels leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Connolly added that Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of State, referred to the trio as the “three amigos.”

Volker testified earlier this month; Sondland is to appear on Thursday. Text messages showed that Volker coordinated with Sondland, on a proposed announcement by Ukraine’s leader that his government would investigate the issues raised by Trump’s allegations of wrongdoing by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

White House Chose Back-Channel Trio to Skirt Envoys on Ukraine

Connolly added that Kent also did not have to expressly explain in his testimony what the bypassing of normal channels meant. That’s because, he said, Kent had already testified about his own concerns that the “shadow, parallel role” of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, had “undermined 28 years of U.S. efforts to try to promote the rule of law in Ukraine.”

Michael McKinley, who recently resigned as a senior adviser to Pompeo, is scheduled to speak to impeachment investigators on Wednesday, committee officials said, and Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper, is to appear on Friday.

As the testimony moved forward, Trump invited congressional leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to the White House on Wednesday afternoon to discuss Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria.

White House Chose Back-Channel Trio to Skirt Envoys on Ukraine

Pelosi on Tuesday confirmed that the full House won’t vote to formalize the impeachment inquiry at this point, repeating her argument that there is “no requirement” for there to be a floor vote for the investigation to continue.

Trump and his allies have argued that the inquiry was illegitimate without a formal House vote.

“You’d have a better chance for a fair judicial system in China than in Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News Wednesday.

Vice President Mike Pence became the latest administration official to advance that rationale. His counsel told House lawmakers in a letter Tuesday that Pence’s office would not cooperate with a request for documents related to the Ukraine investigation.

“The Office of the Vice President encourages the committees to forgo their request to the Office of the Vice President, or hold it in abeyance, pending your discussion with the White House Counsel’s Office concerning compliance with constitutionally mandated procedures,” Pence’s counsel Matthew Morgan wrote to Democratic Representatives Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff and Eliot Engel, who lead the committees conducting the investigation.

Schiff told reporters on Tuesday that “the case for obstruction of Congress continues to build” as the three House panels, Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs, pursued their investigation.

He cited a “complete effort by the administration to stonewall” the probe.

He added that he expects the committees to release transcripts at some point and to call some witnesses back for open hearings.

--With assistance from Erik Wasson and Caitlin Webber.

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

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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