Ukraine scheme

'Simple' and 'terrible': Dems blast Trump's Ukraine scheme at impeachment hearing

Democrats expect key figures in the Ukraine saga to help them make the case that Trump abused the power of the presidency.

By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO

The impeachment of Donald Trump is a story of a president exploiting a weak European ally under siege by Russia to boost his 2020 reelection campaign, the House Democrat leading the impeachment probe said Wednesday, describing a sinister campaign by Trump to abuse his office and bend Ukrainians to his will.

"The matter is as simple, and as terrible as that," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the first comments in Democrats' public impeachment proceedings, as they seek to persuade Americans that Trump committed offenses that can only be remedied by impeachment and removal from office.

"Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself, and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their Commander-in-Chief," Schiff said.

With Schiff's opening statement, the House’s historic sprint toward Trump's impeachment began. He followed his sweeping comments with a detailed breakdown of the allegations against Trump: that he conditioned a White House meeting and $400 million in military aid for Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Ukraine's acquiescence to a demand that he investigate former vice president Joe Biden and other Democrats.

Two of the most compelling witnesses in the inquiry, diplomats William Taylor and George Kent, described efforts by Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to "gin up" the politically motivated investigations by leaning on high-level Ukrainians.

Kent said Giuliani has been aided in this effort by "some of those same corrupt former prosecutors" that State Department officials spent years trying to sideline.

"They were now peddling false information in order to exact revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct, including U.S. diplomats, Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, and reform-minded civil society groups in Ukraine," Kent said. "In mid-August, it became clear to me that Giuliani’s efforts to gin up politically motivated investigations were now infecting U.S. engagement with Ukraine."

Kent also described Giuliani's efforts as a matter of increasingly pitched concern inside the State Department: "There appeared to be two channels of U.S. policy-making and implementation, one regular and one highly irregular.”

Taylor said that the irregular channel included Giuliani, as well as Trump's acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former Trump Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker.

Taylor also revealed for the first time that one of his aides overheard Sondland on the phone with Trump, during which the president asked about “the investigations.” Taylor said Sondland told the president that the Ukrainians were “ready to move forward.”

Taylor then relayed a conversation between one of his aides and Sondland, telling lawmakers that Sondland “responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.” Taylor said he was “not aware of this information” when he testified at a private deposition on Oct. 22.

Taylor, who became the first witness behind closed doors to connect Trump directly to allegations that military aid had been withheld to pressure Ukraine, said he still believes conditioning aid on the politically motivated investigations is "crazy."

Taylor and Kent are the first witnesses to testify publicly before the House Intelligence Committee, as Democrats seek to make the case that Trump abused the power of the presidency to extort a foreign government to his political benefit.

The public proceedings mark the end of the House’s closed-door investigation and the start of a risky, unpredictable series of open hearings that could shape Americans’ views on whether Trump deserves to become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

Taylor and Kent are under subpoena for Wednesday’s high-stakes testimony, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry — an indication that the Trump administration sought to block their public appearance.

Even before the proceedings began, the cavernous hearing room — the notoriously frigid chamber of the Ways and Means Committee — was dotted with lawmakers there to simply spectate. Top Trump allies Mark Meadows, Andy Biggs and Louie Gohmert were among the earliest arrivals.

The Republican strategy to defend Trump was already on display before the hearing began. Three placards were assembled on easels behind the GOP seats: One quoted Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) suggesting that Trump could be reelected if he isn't impeached; a second accused Schiff of knowing the identity of a whistleblower who first brought the Ukraine scandal to light; and a third was a printout of a tweet by Mark Zaid, a lawyer for the whistleblower, from January 2017, suggesting a "coup" was underway against Trump.

In his opening remarks, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the Intelligence panel, harangued Democrats over what he called a “three-year-long operation” to “overturn the results of the 2016 election.”

“This is a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign,” Nunes said, and described the Ukraine controversy as a "low-rent" sequel to the investigation of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russians.

For the next two weeks, these proceedings will be broadcast across the nation and will showcase a desperately divided Congress jockeying to persuade a similarly divided nation about whether Trump breached his oath of office and endangered national security.

For Democrats, the case is largely settled: Trump pressured Zelensky on a July 25 phone call to announce investigations into Biden and other Democrats.

That call came amid a broader effort by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, aided by senior State Department officials and diplomats, to demand the probes. Along the way, several of those officials warned Ukraine that a White House visit for Zelensky and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid could hinge on succumbing to Trump’s demands.

Republicans are expected to position themselves effectively as Trump’s defense counsel, seeking to legitimize the president's skepticism of Ukraine and minimize his potential role in the Giuliani-led effort. Trump’s allies argue that his concerns about corruption in Ukraine were well-founded and that his discussion with Zelensky was appropriate.

They are also expected to mount a fierce rejection of the impeachment process as a “sham” that has deprived Trump of meaningful pushback and due process. Though Democrats reject this characterization, it is likely to cause flare-ups during the hearings that could become explosive flashpoints for a national audience.

Democrats believe their case is rock-solid — but that they must now sell it to the American public.

The hearings are a legacy-defining test for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schiff, her handpicked impeachment inquiry leader. Democrats have praised Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, for leading a focused closed-door investigation of the Ukraine matter, but there is a pervasive anxiety about the unpredictability of public hearings, which are fraught with political landmines.

Their public questioning began Wednesday with the testimony of Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state. Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, is scheduled to testify publicly on Friday.

Both officials provided investigators with vivid details of what they viewed as a coordinated campaign to condition U.S. military aid and a White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky on the Ukrainian government’s willingness to publicly announce Trump’s desired investigations.

Taylor was the first witness to directly connect Trump to a quid pro quo involving the aid and a White House meeting — but Republicans have pushed back on his claims, noting that his recollections were often based on what others had told him, rather than what he witnessed himself.

Kent, meanwhile, described what he called a “campaign of lies” on the part of Giuliani, Trump’s free-wheeling emissary in the fight to ensure that Ukraine would investigate Biden.

During his closed-door testimony last month, Kent said Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, relayed to him that Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to microphone [sic] and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.”

Republicans are likely to use Kent’s appearance to their advantage, though, because Kent told investigators that he expressed concerns to Biden’s office in 2015 about his son Hunter’s role on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, saying it “could create the perception of a conflict of interest.”