Who’s Who: The Americans at the Center of Trump’s Ukraine Gambit

(Bloomberg) -- Some of them are household names in U.S. politics: Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, Rick Perry.

Others were previously obscure bureaucrats: Kurt Volker, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, Gordon Sondland, Joseph Maguire, Michael Atkinson.

And another isn’t known at all except for the person’s work: A detailed nine-page whistle-blower complaint that has launched an impeachment inquiry into the president.

All of them have had central roles in a quickly unfolding drama over Trump’s overtures to Ukraine to get damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden:

Here’s a playbill:

Rudy Giuliani

Trump added the former mayor of New York to his personal legal team last year, filling the role of the now-imprisoned Michael Cohen as a fixer. He’s become Trump’s most visible defender and attack dog.

For months, Giuliani has been pursuing a conspiracy theory that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in 2016 in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden. The younger Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, whose founder was under investigation for tax evasion. That investigation had been dormant for more than a year, Ukrainian officials say, when the U.S. and its European allies pressured Ukraine to fire the prosecutor for being too lax on corruption cases.

William Barr

The two-time attorney general—serving under both Trump and George H.W. Bush—has ordered an investigation into the genesis of the Russian collusion investigation headed by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

It’s unclear how involved Barr is in the Ukraine investigation, but in his phone call with Zelenskiy, Trump twice brings up Giuliani and Barr in the same breath: “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it,” he told the Ukrainian president. “I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.” The whistle-blower also wrote that Barr “appears to be involved.''

Rick Perry

The former governor of Texas is now Trump’s low-profile energy secretary. And energy is a key part of the Trump administration’s strategy in countering Russian influence in Ukraine.

Perry led the U.S. delegation to Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May—a diplomatic downgrade from Vice President Mike Pence, who had been scheduled to attend. Although the whistle-blower did not claim direct knowledge of the discussions, the complaint suggests that the purpose of sending Perry was to feel out whether Zelenskiy planned to “play ball” with the Biden investigation.

Kurt Volker

Volker is a career U.S. diplomat who started in the Reagan administration and rose to become U.S. ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush. Trump has tapped him as special envoy to Ukraine, a volunteer position.

According to the whistle-blower, Volker visited the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv the day after Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, providing advice about how to “navigate” Trump’s request for an investigation. Volker was working in concert with Giuliani, who has tweeted out text messages from Volker in order to argue that the Ukrainian outreach was sanctioned by the State Department.

Gordon Sondland

Sondland is founder and chairman of Provenance Hotels. Four companies connected to Sondland donated a combined $1 million to Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The inaugural committee has become an express lane for ambassadorships, and Sondland was tapped as envoy to the European Union last year.

The whistle-blower complaint identifies Sondland and Volker as a team that bridged the gap between the State Department and Giuliani. Beginning in May, the anonymous intelligence officer says, Volker and Sondland “sought to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the one hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other.”

T. Ulrich Brechbuhl

Brechbuhl attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and was tapped last year to be a top adviser and confidant to Pompeo. He holds the title of counselor to the State Department.

The whistle-blower says Brechbuhl was one of about a dozen White House and administration officials listening in on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy.

Marie Yovanovitch

The career diplomat served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019. President Trump recalled her to Washington on May 20, the day of Zelenskiy’s inauguration. Ukraine’s prosecutor had accused her of giving him a “do not prosecute” list during a meeting, but later walked back the accusation.

Yovanovitch was viewed with suspicion by both Zelenskiy and Trump. After Trump asked for an investigation of Biden, Zelenskiy asked Trump for information on Yovanovitch (spelled “Ivonovich” in the transcript) as part of an apparent Ukrainian investigation. Trump called her “a bad ambassador” loyal to Obama and said “she’s going to go through some things.”

Joseph Maguire

The retired vice admiral commanded special warfare forces and was nominated by Trump to serve as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He’s been serving as the acting Director of National Intelligence since Dan Coats resigned last month.

Maguire received a whistle-blower report from his inspector general on Aug. 26. The law requires reports of “urgent concern” to be turned over to relevant congressional committees, but Maguire sought a legal opinion that said he didn’t have to turn over the report because it concerned the president, who is not under the inspector general’s jurisdiction. That decision was the subject of a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday.

Michael Atkinson

A former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, Atkinson is now the intelligence community inspector general—the internal watchdog overseeing 19 different intelligence agencies.

Atkinson received a whistle-blower complaint about the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call on Aug. 12. Under the Inspector General Act, Atkinson had 14 days to determine whether the complaint was urgent and credible. He did so on Aug. 26, forwarding the complaint to Maguire.

The Whistle-Blower

So who is the whistle-blower whose complaint did more in three weeks to prod Congress to begin impeachment proceedings than the Mueller investigation did in two years?

The complaint itself suggested only the whistle-blower works in the intelligence community and currently outside the White House. The whistle-blower said he or she was “not a direct witness” to most of the events, but with access to other top U.S. officials in a position who were.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net

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