Today, William B. Taylor Jr., the United States ambassador to Ukraine, becomes the latest Trump administration official to make his way to Capitol Hill to offer his account to impeachment investigators as they search for answers about Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine.
Taylor is expected to be questioned about a series of text messages from September revealed by a former colleague, Kurt D. Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, in which Mr. Taylor wrote that he thought it was “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
The exchange appeared to suggest that the Trump administration was trying to use a $319 million package of aid to Ukraine as leverage to squeeze the nation’s president to open investigations that would boost Trump’s presidential campaign — and that Taylor was alarmed by the effort.
Yesterday, George Kent testified before the committee. What did we learn?
Days before a key meeting with White House advisers about Ukraine, foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban reportedly urged President Trump to take a hostile view of Kiev.
Trump met with Orban on May 13, 10 days before the meeting with several top presidential advisers, including now-outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, The New York Times reports.
His conversations with Orban and Putin strengthened his views that Ukraine was a corrupt nation looking to undermine him in the 2016 presidential election, The Washington Post reports.
The Hungarian and Russian leaders, however, reportedly did not specifically urge Trump to ask Ukraine for information on Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Former national security adviser John Bolton and Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council’s senior director for Eurasian and Russian affairs, opposed the Trump-Orban White House meeting, but acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney ultimately overruled them, the Post reports.
During the May 23 meeting, several top Trump advisers reportedly reassured the president that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky deserved support from the U.S., but Trump called the Ukrainians “terrible people” who “tried to take me down” in 2016.
At the time of the meeting, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was also working to influence the president about Ukraine as he aimed to pressure Kiev to provide damaging information about Democrats. Trump then pressured Zelensky during a July 25 call to investigate Biden and his son. House Democrats launched in impeachment inquiry in September amid revelations surrounding that call.
Just shows how easy it has been for foreign powers to manipulate Trump.
Trump was whining on Twitter again this morning, comparing the investigation to a “lynching” — and lots of white southern GOP politicians came to his defense in the use of the comparison,
Graham tried to remove a president from office for covering up an affair. https://t.co/3BUMOwFftT
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) October 22, 2019
The President is not a victim. He should be the most powerful person on the planet. To equate his plight to lynching is grotesque. https://t.co/ZECeswGlWx
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) October 22, 2019
Yup. Lynching is an insane comparison:
Let’s start with the obvious — a bare majority in the House can already impeach a president at any time, for any reason they deem fit. Even by a tiny margin.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
I have no idea what he thinks is new here, but nothing has changed.
Third, for a politician who constantly presents himself as a bold, tough guy who breaks the mold and has people at his rallies wearing “Fuck Your Feelings” t-shirts, the endless whining about not being treated fairly is just sad.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
Fifth, this isn’t the first time people have referred to an impeachment proceeding against a president as a “lynching” — it came up often when conservatives tried to defend Richard Nixon in the Watergate investigation. pic.twitter.com/XwRpju7jPn
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
Seventh — and read this part slowly if the last two didn’t shock you — there is NO reason to liken the Constitution’s formal remedy for removing a president to an illegal mob action that seeks to subvert the rule of law with the kidnapping, murder and mutilation of a suspect.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
Ninth — again, hard to believe we have to say this, but here we are — when your supporters at rallies are wearing shirts that “joke” about lynching the media whom you repeatedly denounce as “enemies of the state,” you shouldn’t claim that *you* are the victim of lynching. pic.twitter.com/hDaHc3lDOW
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
Eleventh, and related to that, you are seeking to subvert the rule of law here by spreading fear, confusion and hatred.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
Again, I think it’s insulting to bring lynching into this, but if anything here even remotely resembles the dynamics of a lynch mob, it’s not your critics.
Twelfth and most important, the goal of this tweet is obviously to distract from the substance of the very serious charges that have been brought against the president — which he and his aides have already largely confirmed.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 22, 2019
Stay focused, and don’t fall for this utter bullshit.
@realDonaldTrump and @LindseyGrahamSC this is a lynching. Trump this is not happening to you and it’s pathetic that you act like you’re such a victim; but it did happen to 147 black people in your state Lindsey. “A lynching in every sense”? You should know better. pic.twitter.com/RQNQaOaLsd
— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) October 22, 2019
UPDATE: Bill Taylor’s testimony this morning did not disappoint…
Confirmed: Bill Taylor’s opening statement was 15 pages long and led many in the room listening to his testimony to sigh and gasp as he described efforts to tie an investigation of the 2016 election interference to a White House meeting and aid being released to Ukraine.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 22, 2019
He also said Taylor’s testimony could lead the committee to revisit previous witnesses.
— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) October 22, 2019
Lynch would not get into the substance of the testimony but told reporters that Taylor mentioned personal notes that he took, and he indicated he kept “extensive notes on all of this.”
UPDATE #2 — Oh, this is really bad:
The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain.
“Was contingent on” — that’s a quid pro quo.
Acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. testified behind closed doors in the House impeachment probe of Trump that he stands by his characterization that it was “crazy” to make the assistance contingent on investigations he found troubling.
Upon arriving in Kyiv last spring he became alarmed by secondary diplomatic channels involving U.S. officials that he called “weird,” Taylor said, according to a copy of his lengthy opening statement obtained by The Washington Post.
Taylor walked lawmakers through a series of conversations he had with other U.S. diplomats who were trying to obtain what one called the “deliverable” of Ukrainian help investigating Trump’s political rivals.
Here’s the quid pro quo again…
“Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,’” Taylor told House investigators.
“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.’
Taylor was called to testify before committees considering whether to impeach Trump because he had raised alarms about Trump administration interactions with Zelensky.
“It was just the most damning testimony I’ve heard,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in an interview partway into Taylor’s testimony.***
“He drew a very specific direct line from President Trump to the withholding of foreign aid and the refusal of a meeting,” between Trump and the new Ukrainian leader, Wasserman Schultz said, “directly related to both insisting on Zelensky publicly say that he’ll have an investigation, that they will investigate.”
And if there are meticulous contemporaneous notes, ugh.
UPDATE #3. Washington Post got its hands on his opening statement: