No Defense

The President Has No Defense

After the bombshell testimony by the U.S. envoy to Ukraine, the best Trump can hope for is mercy.

By RENATO MARIOTTI

It’s hard to overstate how much damage the testimony of William Taylor, the U.S. envoy to Ukraine, inflicted on President Donald Trump’s defense in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

On its face, Taylor’s testimony Tuesday established the quid pro quo that Trump has denied for weeks. But more importantly, Taylor’s detailed notes of the “highly irregular” policymaking that he witnessed over the summer provide a road map to future testimony that could be even more harmful. Republicans have already begun to retreat from their “no quid pro quo” line, but they will have to keep retreating, because Taylor has almost single-handedly decimated the few witnesses who have provided some testimony that is favorable to Trump.

If I were one of the president’s lawyers, I would counsel him to admit the obvious—essentially to plead guilty and admit this was, in fact, a quid pro quo—and try and convince Congress and the public that it is not as bad as it looks. In my experience, defendants who stubbornly try to deny the obvious in the face of overwhelming evidence rarely convince anyone.

Taylor, a Trump appointee who served as an Army officer in Vietnam before embarking on a long government and diplomatic career in both Republican and Democratic administrations, testified that military aid to Ukraine appropriated by Congress—and a White House meeting sought by the Ukrainian government—were both conditioned on a public announcement of investigations that would have aided Trump politically.

Taylor was crystal clear on that point. He testified that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland—a hotel tycoon and major Trump donor—told him that Trump wanted to put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “in a public box” by forcing him to make a public statement ordering investigations of Ukraine’s alleged role in the 2016 U.S. election as well as the gas company, Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was a board member. “Everything,” Taylor said he was told, was dependent on that public announcement.

This demand was communicated to the Ukrainian government. Sondland told Taylor that he told Zelensky and one of his top advisors, Andrey Yermak, that if Zelensky did not speak publicly, Ukraine would not receive the military aid it needed, according to Taylor. Somehow, Sondland, in a now well-known text to Taylor, still tried to insist that the president did not consider this kind of conditional agreement a quid pro quo.

Taylor, operating in the normal diplomatic channel rather than the one run by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, testified that he and others—including Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)—advised the Ukrainian government not to jeopardize bipartisan support for Ukraine by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics. The Ukrainians told Taylor that President Zelensky “did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election campaign.” After the ultimatum was conveyed to Ukraine, Zelensky agreed to make a public statement, although the aid was released without a statement after its holdup was made public.

On multiple occasions, Taylor confronted Sondland and tried to persuade him to halt this effort. Sondland and former U.S. diplomat Kurt Volker explained to Taylor that Trump is a businessman, and “when a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something,” he “asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”

As Taylor noted, this “made no sense” because the Ukrainians “did not owe President Trump anything” and “holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was crazy.” Trump was holding up tax dollars, appropriated by Congress, to force Ukraine to announce an investigation into the son of his political rival—and risking Ukrainian lives in the process.

Given Taylor’s devastating testimony, it’s unsurprising that some Republicans are backing off the “no quid pro quo” line that has been part of Trump’s defense for weeks. Some of Trump’s defenders, such as Senator Lindsey Graham, continue to argue that there was no quid pro quo because the Ukrainian president publicly denied that there was one.

This line is unlikely to hold up in the upcoming weeks. Taylor’s testimony is a road map that strongly suggests additional investigative steps that will undercut attempts to contradict his testimony that Trump conditioned military aid on an announcement of investigations.

For one thing, Taylor’s testimony undercuts the prior testimony of other witnesses, like Sondland and Volker. At best, their prior testimony was incomplete and misleading. At worst, it was materially false, which could lead Congress to hold them in contempt—an option some members have already suggested. Even Congressman Will Hurd (R-Texas) has suggested that Sondland needs to come back to testify again. (On Wednesday, associates of Sondland tried to align his story more closely with Taylor’s by suggesting Sondland was unaware initially of the linkage between the military aid and Trump’s request for investigations.)

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Taylor testified that he raised these concerns with then-national security adviser John Bolton, who Taylor said referred to Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine as a “drug deal” and opposed a call between Trump and Zelensky because he feared it “would be a disaster.” Bolton, who has since resigned, has not spoken publicly. What would he say if called to testify?

Taylor privately met with Bolton and expressed his serious concerns to him during this process, and, according to Taylor, Bolton recommended that he write a cable directly to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Taylor wrote that cable on August 29, calling the Trump pressure effort “folly” and stating that he “would not defend such a policy.” Taylor said Pompeo never responded to him but he heard that Pompeo carried the cable with him to a White House meeting.

Pompeo has a lot of explaining to do. When interviewed on Sunday by George Stephanopoulos, Pompeo looked like a deer in the headlights, awkwardly pausing and refusing to answer fundamental questions about his role. Pompeo argues executive privilege, and it’s unlikely a court battle to compel his testimony would be resolved quickly, but pressure could mount for his testimony as the impeachment inquiry advances. Unlike some others in Trump’s inner circle, Pompeo has future political aspirations and reportedly has weighed a run for U.S. Senate in Kansas. He can’t afford to be Trump’s fall guy.

Neither can Sondland, who in his prior testimony didn’t display the defiance and disdain that characterized the congressional testimony of Trump allies like former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Taylor’s testimony was full of damaging details about Sondland, such as his insistence that calls with Zelensky not be transcribed. In Taylor’s account, Sondland comes off like someone trying to hide conduct that he knew was wrongful. He will have difficulty explaining why our nation’s envoy to Ukraine was not permitted to read the transcript of Zelensky’s call with Trump until it was released publicly two months after the fact.

It is clear from Taylor’s testimony that there is more to come. A smart defense team would get ahead of this by admitting that there was a quid pro quo, falling back to the argument advanced by some on the right, like Tucker Carlson, that the conduct was wrong but impeachment is too severe of a remedy.

If Republicans quickly admitted what Trump did but insisted that they wanted the American people to decide Trump’s fate in December, they might reduce the damage and move past this episode, assuming they had the votes in the U.S. Senate to prevent conviction. If Trump refuses to allow them to adopt that strategy, he becomes Republicans’ own worst enemy. Because if Taylor’s testimony is any guide, they will reach that point eventually, and the road getting there will be rocky for the administration.