Kent testimony

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified for roughly 10 hours.

[...]

“What I can say is he was clearly bothered by the role Mr. Giuliani was playing and the disinformation he was spreading,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told reporters after leaving the gathering.

Connolly said Kent expressed concerns with what he described as an informal — and dangerous — alliance between three figures wrapped up in the Ukraine affair: Giuliani; Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's former chief prosecutor; and John Solomon, a former opinion contributor at The Hill, who wrote a series of columns critical of the Bidens.

The three worked in concert, Kent testified, according to Connolly, on a mission to oust Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was removed in May, and press Ukrainian leaders to investigate the Bidens for the purpose of boosting Trump's reelection chances next year.

[...]

"And it's sort of this unholy alliance — or unholy triad — that somehow managed to seize control of U.S. foreign policy with respect to Ukraine," Connolly continued. "And as [Kent] said, the consequence would [be to] undermine 28 years of our efforts to promote the rule of law by actually doing something corrupt ourselves."

A source familiar with the matter also said Kent testified that while the State Department viewed former prosecutor general Viktor Shokin as corrupt, Lutsenko was considered to be just as bad.

[Connolly] also underpinned growing scrutiny of individuals who circumvented the proper channels for carrying out Ukraine policy, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker.

Kent described a May 23 meeting, organized by Mulvaney, where “it was determined that ... responsibility for U.S.-Ukraine policy was to be transferred to three individuals: Volker, Sondland and [Energy Secretary] Rick Perry,” Connolly said.

[...]

“They revealed that decision at a meeting with Zelensky in Kiev, I believe on June 2,” Connolly said. “And for some Americans from the embassy, that was news to them."

[...]

The group dubbed themselves “the three amigos,” Connolly continued, citing Kent.

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Republicans have loudly complained about the process, saying Democrats are selectively leaking favorable interview tidbits from closed-door hearings while failing to promptly release full transcripts of witness interviews — all complaints that Democrats similarly lodged when the GOP had majority power in the House last year.

  The Hill

Bingo. Congress is so broken. And much, but not all, of the blame for that lies on Mitch McConnell.