Volker should be prosecuted

Remember impeachment number one?

“At no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden,” [Kurt] Volker said in his Oct. 3, 2019, deposition. “You will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion.”

He echoed this in his later testimony: “At no time was I aware of or knowingly took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden. As you know from the extensive real-time documentation I have provided, Vice President Biden was not a topic of our discussions.”

The idea that the Trump team’s push might somehow not actually have been about the Bidens was a very fine line walked by another member of the “three amigos” whose testimony Republicans initially played up, then-European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry also tried to make a similar argument. The problem with all of that: Giuliani himself had explicitly connected the requested investigations to Biden in his public comments months before.

[...]

And the recording obtained by CNN shows Giuliani indeed making those connections in a call featuring Volker himself.

“All we need from the [Ukraine] President [Volodymyr Zelensky],” Giuliani says on the call, “is to say, I’m going to put an honest prosecutor in charge, he’s gonna investigate and dig up the evidence that presently exists, and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out.”

[...]

Volker’s testimony is worth a careful parse. He also referred specifically to the idea that Biden wasn’t brought up in the text messages he turned over — rather than at all in any conversations. And whether he was specifically party to “an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden” is also debatable, for reasons mentioned above.

Another issue: Volker in his deposition presented the Giuliani-Yermak call as “just an introductory phone call so they could talk to each other.”

“It was literally, you know, ‘Let me introduce,’ you know, ‘Mr. Giuliani,’ ” Volker said. “ ‘Let me introduce Mr. Yermak.’ ” Volker might have been referring narrowly to his own role, but the call lasted more than 40 minutes and dealt with plenty of the substantive subjects that would later come up in the impeachment trial.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Trump purges

An entire roster of public servants has been disparaged, bullied and in some cases banished for standing in Trump’s path as he sought to pressure Ukraine for political favors, or for testifying about his conduct afterward.

Many who came forward were convinced that Trump’s actions were a violation of American principles, if not the law, and they clung to a misplaced faith that matters of national security would transcend partisan politics. Instead, the impeachment saga has hardened political divisions and cast doubt on the United States’ commitment to ideals it has long professed.

[...]

But the fallout of the impeachment battle extends far beyond Trump’s political survival in a Senate trial. Tensions, exposed by impeachment, have fed Trump’s belief that he is surrounded by disloyal subordinates and have fueled animosity among congressional Republicans toward the supposed “deep state.” Today, the idea that a cadre of nonpartisan civil servants can loyally serve presidents of either party in pursuit of shared national interests — a bedrock principle of the country’s approach to foreign policy since World War II — is under attack.

[...]

Their actions have fed the view among some Republicans that impeachment is not just an isolated fight about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine but also is an extension of a broader, unfinished conflict.

[...]

The impeachment-related damage is extensive. The acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., returned to Kyiv after his Nov. 14 testimony only to watch Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, arrive weeks later to resume his quest for dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Giuliani’s sojourn while filming a documentary for a right-wing television network made clear to officials in Ukraine that Taylor and the U.S. Embassy had no standing with the U.S. president.

Taylor has since announced that he will step down by Jan. 2, clearing out of the Ukrainian capital on an accelerated schedule in part to spare Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — scheduled to visit Kyiv next month — from having to appear in pictures alongside a diplomat Trump branded as disloyal.

  WaPo

This is really sad. Pompeo himself is stepping down soon to run for the Senate from Kansas.

The ambassador had taken the job only after Pompeo promised him that U.S. policy would remain firmly grounded in fighting Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, an assurance that now seems uncertain at best.

[...]

"I’ve not seen anything like this since I joined the Foreign Service,” said John Heffern, a former senior State Department official who entered the department when Ronald Reagan was president. “Our work is promoting international universal values — freedom of the press and rule of law. Considering what’s happened in the United States, it undermines our ability to project that message to our foreign counterparts.”

It seems obvious that's no longer what our country stands for - hasn't been for decades. Career diplomats are laboring under an old narrative.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top adviser on Ukraine at the National Security Council, has continued to work at the White House since testifying that he was so disturbed by Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky that he reported his concerns to White House lawyers.

But Vindman — who was born in Ukraine, moved to the United States with his family at age 3 and earned a Purple Heart in the war in Iraq — has been taunted by Trump, cast as disloyal by the president’s allies and falsely accused of plotting with the whistleblower to undermine the president.

When Trump gets beyond the Senate "trial", Vindman will be given the boot.

Fiona Hill, the former top Russia adviser at the White House, has endured obscene phone calls to her home phone, according to people familiar with the matter, and vicious assaults from far-right media. Alex Jones, the conspiracy monger who operates the Infowars website, devoted much of his Nov. 22 broadcast to smears against Hill. “I want her ass indicted,” Jones said. “I want her indicted for perjury. Today. Indict that whore.”

For Hill, the attacks were a continuation of an astonishing level of hostility she witnessed during the two years she served in the White House. Trump loyalists drafted internal “enemies” lists, co-workers were purged, and NSC security teams logged hundreds of external threats against Hill and other officials.

[...]

Within weeks of joining the administration, [Hill] faced a wave of internal and external efforts to discredit or neutralize her.

[...]

For Hill, ever the Russia analyst, the ruthless nature of the harassment harked back to the Bolshevik purges of revolutionary Russia. Bannon has all but touted this connection, comparing his destructive agenda to that of Vladi­mir Lenin’s.

In 2017, Bannon and his allies compiled a list of about 50 people they wanted exiled from the National Security Council. Most of their targets drew suspicion because they had worked as civil servants in the Obama White House. Bannon’s team also scoured the targets’ social media profiles for signs of disloyalty to the Trump administration.

[...]

Key players in those 2017 purges, and several of their targets, have resurfaced in the impeachment fight.

Among the first to confront Hill when she joined the White House that year was Derek Harvey, who went to the NSC after working for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on the House Intelligence Committee. On one of Hill’s first days on the job, Harvey told her he could not understand why Trump had allowed her into the fold.

[...]

Harvey, who was active in generating the enemies list, returned to Nunes’s staff after being ousted by then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster in July 2017. When Hill testified behind closed doors before the committee, Harvey could be seen passing notes to members, officials said.He also approached Hill at one point, telling her that the “trolls are out again.” The gesture, intended to communicate sympathy, ignored the fact that Hill and others viewed him as contributing to the poisonous climate.

[...]

Bannon said the whistleblower was at the top of the list he and his allies created in 2017. Former White House officials said it also included a State Department official now serving as a top aide to Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Another early target of Trump loyalists was Stephanie Holmes, a career State Department employee assigned to the NSC who was falsely accused of leaking details of Trump’s Oval Office conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

[...]

She subsequently left her NSC job to take a post that seemingly should have shielded her from the bloodletting, moving with her husband, David, also a diplomat, to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

It was [there in Kyiv] that David Holmes was in position to witness Trump’s phone call with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland at an outdoor cafe.

[...]

Trump has intentionally fostered internal friction, sowing tension among subordinates as a management tactic, current and former White House officials said. But he also inadvertently hired advisers who are repelled by his crude behavior and isolationist instincts.

McMaster, former chief of staff John F. Kelly, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and others all fought Trump on major aspects of his foreign policy — his disdain for the NATO alliance, his desire on a moment’s notice to pull U.S. troops out of war zones, andhis aversion to imposing sanctions on Russia. They, in turn, often hired subordinates who were similarly scornful of Trump’s positions.

And they'll all have to eventually be rooted out.

The most senior officials, such as Pompeo, and John Bolton when he was national security adviser, often relied on underlings to sound alarms or subvert Trump’s efforts to pressure Zelensky, without putting their own standing with the president at risk.

Such leadership!

Taylor, Hill and Vindman repeatedly raised objections to aspects of the shadow policy they perceived but had no meaningful power to stop it.

I had just such a boss in my last position, and I can tell you that type of boss is not respected by his subordinates. Nor deserves to be.

Former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker walked a treacherous tightrope,working to secure a commitment from Ukraine to pursue the investigations to clear impediments to what he regarded as the real policy: bolstering Ukraine in its war with Russian-backed separatists.

He hid his alarm at Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and the president’s loathing for the Ukrainians. Volker saw himself as facing a choice: He could accept Trump’s view of Ukraine or try to fix it.

“I tried to fix it,” he testified. Volker’s career was derailed as a result. He resigned from his diplomatic post after his role in the Ukraine episode was exposed. He was also forced to step down as executive director of the McCain Institute, a think tank whose stated mission is to advance “character-driven leadership.”

Good to know the McCain Institute doesn't suffer hypocrites. (Or at least not ones who get caught.)

Career diplomats and civil servants routinely suppress private views to execute policies set by presidents. The impeachment hearings forced a parade of witnesses to reveal their feelings about Trump on a stage with an international audience.

[...]

The stark airing of these differences “caused the president to think they are biased against him,” the official said.

[...]

In reality, none of those who testified had ever publicly opposed Trump, and many had made conscious decisions — despite misgivings — to return to government to work for him.

As several people have warned: eventually, Trump will turn on everyone.

Hill was cautioned by friends and colleagues in the close-knit foreign policy community to reject the NSC job. One long-standing peer has refused to speak with her since learning she had gone to work for Trump.

That's rough.

Three years into Trump’s presidency, the list of perceived enemies continues to expand, and now is composed of officials whom Trump or his own subordinates hired. The hostility they face comes not only from Trump loyalists — whether inside the administration or launching attacks from right-wing media sites — but also from a substantial swath of the Republican Party.

For decades, the GOP cast itself as the champion of the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other national security institutions. But over the past three years, Republicans have repeatedly turned on those agencies when necessary to protect Trump’s presidency.

In their final report on the impeachment hearings, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee focused on “unelected bureaucrats” as the true villains of the impeachment scandal.

[...]

Ultimately, they were to blame.

An aside: I wonder when we began spelling it Kyiv instead of Kiev. I've always pronounced it as Kee-ev, but I notice that the diplomats who work there pronounce it Keev.

"Here we say 'Kyiv' not 'Kiev,'" Taras Ilkiv, a Ukrainian journalist who recently wrote an article for Business Insider on the protests, explained in an email, "because 'Kiev' is the Russian word." It's simple: in Ukrainian, the word for the city is Київ, while in Russian, it reads as Киев.

So, Kee-ev is the Russian pronunciation. I suppose we've been using that term for at least as long as there was a Soviet Union. The first mention I see of changing the way we pronounce the name is in that 2014 Business Insider article. (The Russian language does not have the letter "ї".) And I'm going to speculate that some - if not most - of us older folks are going to keep on calling it Kee-ev. Personally, I'm trying to remember to use the Ukrainian word, since, after all, it's a Ukrainian city.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More on Yermak

Wondering about Yermak's decision to speak out only now, threatening the impeachment premise, in a previous post, I wondered if he met with Rudy last week.

He has been in contact with Rudy in the recent past, in Madrid last August.  And with Trump's former campaign communication director Bryan Lanza on November 13. (same article)

I also wondered if the Dems had any backup for Sondland's testimony that he told Yermak about the military aid and White House meeting being contingent upon Zelensky publicly announcing they were investigating the Bidens.  I didn't remember, but apparently Tim Morrison's testimony contained a second-hand bacup.

Sondland isn’t the only person who testified to this. So too did former White House aide Timothy Morrison, who said he saw Sondland did indeed pull Yermak aside and that Sondland told him about the content of the conversation in real time.

Here’s the relevant portion of Morrison’s testimony:

Q: During the Warsaw visit Ambassador Sondland, I guess, had a sidebar with Yermak?

MORRISON: Yes. Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Yermak.

Q: Did you witness that exchange?

MORRISON: I witnessed it, yes.

Q: Okay. And were you part of the exchange on did you just see it occur?

MORRISON: I saw it occur.

Q: Okay. And what did you learn about that exchange? I guess Ambassador Sondland told you what he told Yermak?

MORRISON: He came -- he essentially walked across a, you know, a -- I don’t know how to describe the room. He walked across the space and he briefed me on what he said he had said to Mn. Yermak.

Q: Okay. What did he tell you?

MORRISON: He told me that in his -- that what he communicated was that he believed the -- what could help them move the aid was if the prosecutor general would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.

So there are two witnesses, under oath and penalty of perjury, who are testifying to this, including Morrison who was a Republican witness and wasn’t anxious to accuse Trump of wrongdoing. And it’s their word against a witness who wasn’t under oath.

It’s also worth noting that Ukraine has plenty of motivation to cast doubt on this, and that some of Yermak’s comments strain credulity.

  WaPo

Of course that's true, but it's not proof, and the Trump cabal will have all the time between now and the Senate trial to press Yermak's new statements. And to have Yermak make more statements contradicting Sondland and Morrison's testimony.

It bear[s] emphasizing that Yermak was the one most intimately familiar with the horse-trading that was going on here. His texts with Trump aides regularly attached a White House meeting for Zelensky to Ukraine announcing the investigations. To read those texts and not believe there was at least an implied quid pro quo is to put blinders on.

The default Trump supporter/Republican position. And I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't take the support for impeachment down a notch, or at least have some independents wavering.

To hear Yermak tell it, he was involved in all of those quid-pro-quo-y discussions, but when the military aid was frozen, he didn’t think that might be related to the investigations which still hadn’t been announced. If he didn’t, he was really giving the benefit of the doubt to a bunch of people who were rather clearly leveraging him.

He knew. The question is why he's coming out with this now and whether he intends to keep saying it. And Zelensky. What will he be saying?

Then again, we have the claim that Lev Parnas was there for the Giuliani/Yermak meeting, and Parnas, through his attorney, claims he wants to testify. I'm going to guess he'll try to leverage his testimony for leniency or immunity in his criminal case.  Whether the Dems will bite, I don't know.

This article was published November 22:

When Rudy Giuliani met with a senior Ukrainian official in Madrid earlier this year and urged him to investigate the Bidens, Lev Parnas was at the table, according to Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian official.

Parnas’ presence at the meeting, which has not been previously reported, indicates that he may have significant visibility into Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Kyiv to investigate a company linked to one of President Donald Trump’s political rivals.

[...]

“Giuliani introduced him as his associate/colleague, and probably said his name, but I didn’t remember it, and remembered again when I saw Lev Parnas’ face on TV and thought that this face looks familiar,” Yermak said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “But we didn’t have a conversation, I spoke only to Giuliani.”

Joseph Bondy, Parnas’ New York-based criminal defense attorney, confirmed that his client attended the meeting.

“Mr. Parnas traveled to Madrid to meet Rudolph Giuliani, where he attended Rudolph’s meeting with Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak, and witnessed Rudolph pressuring Yermak on behalf of President Trump to compel Zelensky to announce that his administration was launching a corruption investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.

[...]

Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian government needed to investigate Burisma and the allegations about 2016.

“I talked to him about the whole package,” Giuliani told The Washington Post in September.

  Daily Beast

While Parnas is not the ideal witness for the Dems' impeachment process, considering his criminal activity and shady background, they may end up needing to use him anyway.

At any rate, Giuliani himself said he told Yermak "about the whole package." That doesn't translate as pressure, but at least it's an admission they talked about the Bidens. (I can't keep track of it all, but reports are that Giuliani told the Ukrainians they needed to release a public statement.)  And there are the emails between Yermak and Giuliani about the wording of the statement Trump was asking for. There are a number of emails that put Yermak squarely in the negotiations, and I'm sure he's worried about how those look to the Ukrainians. Here's one of his emails to Volker:

[8/10/19, 4:56:15 PM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt. Please let me know when you can talk. I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let discuss it

Among the documents released today is a set of text messages between American and Ukrainian officials, discussing a statement that Ukrainian officials understood was essential to getting the administration to agree to a White House meeting. On the evening of August 12, Yermak sent a draft statement to Kurt Volker, then a special envoy to Ukraine.

“Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians,” Yermak’s draft stated. “I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, which in turn will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.”

[...]

The next afternoon, on a new chain adding Sondland, Volker sent Yermak an edited draft. “Following is text with insert at the end for the 2 key items. We will work on official request,” he said. The updated draft read:

Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.

  Defense One

I highlighted the addition Volker made to the statement. Although this statement was never made, because the whole scheme was busted when the whistleblower filed his complaint, this makes it hard to believe Yermak wasn't involved in quid pro quo.  But that's what he's now saying: "We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected to any one specific issue.”

Or, maybe that's not a lie: there were two issues.

Volker and Morrison testimony

Devin Nunes is out of control.

But I digress.

I'm going to have to forgive former ambassador Volker, because he decided to come clean about his closed-door testimony, and to admit that Trump's quid pro quo at least was improper.

But Tim Morrison?  WTF?  He says Trump's phone call to Zelensky was totally proper, nothing wrong with it, AND that after hearing it, he went directly to John Eisenberg - NSC counsel - to report it, because he thought it might look bad politically.  How can both of those things be true?  Plus, he says he didn't bypass his chain of command in doing so because he and Eisenberg on on the same level in their respective departments.

And also that he recommended the call readout be restricted so it wouldn't be leaked.  But, mind you, nothing was wrong with the call.

Does this guy not look like the poster child for bureaucrats?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

That was my impression as well.  It seems highly improbable that he had the position he had and was so naive about the situation.

George Kent transcript released

Kent testified in a closed session on Oct. 15, telling lawmakers that, like other career diplomats, he was essentially cut out of decisions about Ukraine due to maneuvering by other administration officials and outsiders, including Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Kent accused Giuliani of conducting a "campaign of lies" about the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, that led to her early recall from Kyiv.

Kent is among the witnesses scheduled to testify in open hearings next week. He has been in the Foreign Service since 1992, serving in posts ranging from Warsaw to Bangkok.

[...]

Kent makes clear in his testimony that he was alarmed by the role the president’s personal lawyer was playing in trying to shape Ukraine policy — especially his efforts to work with a Ukrainian prosecutor to smear the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch.

But he said that others, like Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine, thought that it was better to engage with Giuliani than to ignore him because of the influence he wielded on President Donald Trump. Volker even brushed off Giuliani’s campaign against Yovanovitch and push to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a rival for the White House in 2020, saying, according to Kent: ”Well, if there’s nothing there, what does it matter?”

  Politico

Under the bus for Volker.

Kent told investigators that, based on his conversations with other senior American diplomats, Gordon Sondland relayed that Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to microphone [sic] and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.”

Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was describing “in shorthand” what Trump wanted the Ukrainians to do, according to Kent.

“Zelensky needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message, and that was the shorthand,” Kent added.

And I suppose Trump will say he can't be held responsible for how Sondland portrayed what Trump wanted.

As Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani was interested in getting Ukraine to investigate Biden and the 2016 election. And Yuriy Lutsenko, a top prosecutor in Ukraine at the time, saw Yovanovitch as an apparent threat to his ability to keep his position as it became clear that U.S. officials felt he was not doing enough to battle corruption.

“Based on what I know, Yuriy Lutsenko, as prosecutor general, vowed revenge, and provided information to Rudy Giuliani in hopes that he would spread it and lead to her removal,” Kent said.

Kent said he learned that Lutsenko had even met in private with Giuliani in New York, where Lutsenko’s purpose was to “throw mud” at Yovanovitch and Kent himself.

Kent said the two men essentially waged a “campaign of lies” about Yovanovitch, who would be recalled early from her post in May.

[...]

At one point, after Giuliani slammed Yovanovitch, Kent and others in a May 2019 interview, Kent was told by his superiors to "keep my head down and lower my profile in Ukraine,” he said.

The instruction came via an intermediary from David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, according to Kent’s understanding. It wasn’t clear if Hale had talked to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about it.

Hale testified to impeachment investigators on Wednesday, but little has yet emerged about what he told them.

[...]

“It was Ambassador Sondland's connections with Mulvaney” that got the U.S. delegation that attended Zelensky’s inauguration a meeting afterwards with President Trump, Kent testified. That meeting “was not done through NSC staff,” Kent said, explaining how it deviated from the typical process for such debriefings.

Sondland, for his part, had testified that “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a formal meeting with Mulvaney … we say hello, we walk by and wave. I don’t believe I’ve sat down with him for a formal meeting on any subject.”

[...]

At a certain point, Kent said, he realized he needed to make a record of his concerns about Ukraine policy. Two conversations in particular triggered the move.

One was with Catherine Croft, a special assistant to Volker. She asked Kent in mid-August, he recalled, whether the U.S. had “ever asked the Ukrainians to investigate anybody.”

He explained to her that if there had been a crime committed in the U.S., there was a treaty that allowed for asking for such assistance, among other options. But if she was talking about asking the Ukrainians to prosecute someone for political reasons, he said, “the answer is, I hope we haven’t, and we shouldn’t because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post-Soviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law.”

The next day, he learned from William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv after Yovanvitch had been pulled out, that Volker had raised the possibility of “investigations” with top Ukrainian officials. So Kent decided to write a “note to the file saying that I had concerns that there was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were injurious to the rule of law, both Ukraine and the U.S.”

[...]

Republican Senators Jim Inhofe, Rob Portman and Mitch McConnell called Trump and asked him about the hold on military aid to Ukraine just before the hold was lifted, according to Kent. The questions, and bipartisan criticism of the hold from members of Congress, may have contributed to Trump’s decision to release the aid on September 11.

No doubt. I would love to hear that conversation with McConnell, et al.

Kent says it was his “personal opinion” that only the White House meeting, not the military assistance, was part of a quid pro quo.

“It strikes me that the association was a meeting with the White House, at the White House, not related to the security assistance,” Kent told investigators. “But again, that’s just my personal opinion, other people may have different opinions."

And they do. Nearly everybody else who's testified, in fact. Particularly Gordon Sondland, who was in direct contact with Trump and would know, after his memory was "refreshed".

Full transcript.

Sondland and Volker transcripts released

The transcripts appear to bolster Democrats’ case that Trump, through his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, encouraged the off-the-books diplomacy.

  Politico

And let's not forget Sondland's testimony was updated after his recollection was "refreshed".

Two of the most striking passages in the transcripts come from Sondland. In one exchange, he describes how Giuliani's demands of Ukraine "kept getting more insidious as [the] timeline went on." In another, he expresses his view that the insistence that Ukraine investigate former vice president Joe Biden was "improper," and possibly illegal.

Volker casts himself as a somewhat naïve diplomat, caught in machinations he didn’t fully understand. He says, for instance, that he didn't initially connect the Burisma gas company to the Bidens, even though Giuliani and Trump apparently were. He also describes feeling compelled to connect Giuliani with Ukrainian officials, both because they wanted it and because Trump wanted it.

[...]

Sondland testified that Trump and Giuliani’s positions “kept getting more insidious,” evolving from a general interest in fighting corruption to an interest in Burisma and finally to an investigation of the Bidens. The EU envoy noted he was not a lawyer but said he “assumed” an effort to pressure Ukraine to do so, as pursued by Giuliani with Trump’s support, would be illegal.

But for some reason he didn't feel obligated to bring it to anyone's attention for accountability.

Sondland testified that Trump was not specific in what he wanted Sondland to work with Giuliani on in Ukraine, saying only that “Ukraine is a problem.” The president also repeatedly told Sondland, Volker and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a May 23 meeting to “talk to Rudy, talk to Rudy” about Ukraine policy — despite Giuliani having no formal foreign policy role and, by then, publicly demanding that Ukraine investigate the Bidens.

[...]

Sondland testified that he called Trump on Sept. 9 after receiving a text from the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor expressing alarm over the withholding of military aid, and asked what he wanted from the Ukrainians. This conversation has been of intense interest to investigators because after he hung up with Trump, Sondland wrote a lawyerly note to Taylor denying that the aid was linked to political favors and suggesting they not speak by text anymore.

Trump was in a “very bad mood” on the phone call, Sondland recalled. But all the president would say was that he wanted Zelensky “to do the right thing” and wasn’t asking for a quid pro quo. “I want him to do what he ran on,” Trump said, according to Sondland.

[...]

Sondland appeared to cover himself on key questions by claiming he didn’t recall certain discussions of the Bidens with Giuliani, conversations with Zelensky about issuing a public statement committing to the investigations, talks with acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about scheduling a White House visit for Zelensky, or details about a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials that alarmed White House aides.

Sondland also testified that he could not recall whether he ever mentioned the word “Burisma” in his meetings and conversations with the Ukrainians [...] or whether he told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), as has been reported, that U.S. military assistance aid was contingent upon Zelensky committing to the probes Trump demanded.

Sondland submitted new testimony last week, however, following rumblings among Democrats that he might have committed perjury. In that supplemental testimony, Sondland confirmed having a conversation with a top Zelensky aide in Warsaw on Sept. 1, in which he told the aide that U.S. military assistance funds would likely not be reinstated “until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”

Sondland acknowledged that Trump and Giuliani were making “demands” of Zelensky, including that he commit to investigating Burisma and the unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. “If you mean that those conditions would have to be complied with prior to getting a meeting, that was my understanding.”

From here on out, Sondland sounds unbelievably shifty or naive, but definitely aware he's caught his dick in his zipper.

Sondland admitted in his transcript that he asked Perry, another key witness in the impeachment probe, to “refresh my memory about a couple of meetings” prior to his testimony. The meeting he said he spoke to Perry about was one that former NSC official Fiona Hill told Congress she was deeply alarmed by, in which Sondland linked support for Ukraine to political investigations.

Sondland testified that he didn’t remember anything improper happening in the meeting, so when details of Hill’s deposition leaked, he reached out to Perry to ask about it. Sondland said he consulted his lawyer before calling Perry, but that he didn’t think was “inappropriate” to do so.

It wasn’t the first time he and Perry spoke amid the impeachment inquiry, according to Sondland. They also connected before Hill’s testimony, but Sondland said he could not recall what they discussed.

And Perry has refused to testify. Nothing suspicious in any of this.

Sondland had previously said in an interview on Ukrainian TV that Trump had given him a “special assignment,” but told lawmakers that that was not really true—Pompeo encouraged him to keep working on Ukraine policy, he said, and he couldn’t recall whether he ever represented to other officials that Trump had specifically asked him to pursue it.

Despite encouraging him to work on Ukraine policy, however, the State Department “discouraged” Sondland from complying with a congressional subpoena to discuss that work, he testified. “They directed me not to appear, which is why I did not appear on the 8th. And once you issued the subpoena, again, they discouraged me from complying with the subpoena, but I decided to come in anyway,” Sondland said.

He's not a complete idiot.

As for Volker...

Volker testified that when he and others tried to convince Trump to meet with Ukraine’s new president, Trump hinted that he didn’t trust the government in Kyiv because he believed it had tried to undermine his election in 2016.

“They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people,” Volker described Trump as saying. “And they tried to take me down.”

President Zelensky...you'll want to hear this.

When Volker and other officials tried to persuade Trump that the new Ukrainian president was different, Trump remained skeptical. He also indicated that Giuliani had been telling him other things.

“I think he said, not as an instruction but just as a comment, talk to Rudy, you know,” Volker described Trump as saying, adding that he further said of Giuliani: “‘He knows all of these things, and they’ve got some bad people around [Zelensky].’ And that was the nature of it.”

[...]

“The negative narrative about Ukraine which Mr. Giuliani was furthering was the problem,” Volker said. “[I]n my view, it was impeding our ability to build the relationship the way we should be doing.”

[...]

The “Pentagon, military, civilian, State Department, National Security Council—they all thought this is really important to provide this [Congressionally budgeted monetary] assistance [to Ukraine]. And so, in that circumstance, for there to be a hold placed struck me as unusual,” Volker said. “I didn’t know the reason. No reason was ever given as to why that was. It came from [the Office of Management and Budget], so I immediately thought about budgetary issues, that, for whatever reason, there’s a hold placed."

[...]

“In my mind, those are three separate things,” Volker explained to lawmakers. “There is Bidens; there is Burisma as a company, which has a long history; and there is 2016 elections.

“And part of what I was doing was making sure and why I wanted to make sure I was in this conversation that we are not getting the Ukrainians into a position about talking about anything other than their own citizens, their own company, or whether their own citizens had done anything in 2016.”

And then there's Rudy.

As questions were swirling over Giuliani’s role in the Ukraine drama, the former New York City mayor went on TV, waved around text messages from Volker, and insisted everything he did in Ukraine was at the “direction” of the State Department.

Then, Giuliani pushed Volker to back that claim up in public.

“All I need for you is to tell the truth,” Giuliani texted Volker on Sept. 22, according to Volker’s testimony, adding later, “Really, this is not hard. Just fair to affirm truth.”

But Volker told lawmakers he was not about to satisfy Giuliani. Although it was true that he’d [hooked up] Ukrainian officials with Giuliani, Volker insisted Giuliani was taking things too far because it was incorrect to say that the State Department was directing Giuliani’s many actions in Ukraine.

“I wasn’t giving direction to him in any way,” Volker said.

And then there's Yovanovitch.

In late April 2019, after Marie Yovanovitch was suddenly recalled from her post as ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor texts Volker about the request that he head back to Kyiv as charge d’affaires for the U.S. Embassy there.

“You should!” Volker responds. But Taylor says Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent “described two snake pits, one in Kyiv and one in Washington.”

Volker tries to downplay Taylor’s concerns, asking “what’s new?” -- to which Taylor responds that what he’d heard from Kent sounded “very ugly.”

Very ugly.

Gordon Sondland testimony transcript

Kurt Volker testimony transcript

UPDATE:

What Lindsey Graham doesn't want to read

Now Trump’s defenders have adopted a new talking point: It was a quid pro quo, but not a corrupt quid pro quo. According to this claim, Trump may have demanded that Ukraine combat corruption in exchange for releasing the aid, but he was simply trying to fight corruption overseas, a core principle of American foreign policy. That move might have skirted the law by holding up congressionally appropriated funds, but the move was fitting and well intentioned. The testimony released today cuts straight through that excuse, suggesting that not only did Trump hold up the aid in exchange for a statement (the quid pro quo), but he did so to further his own political prospects (the corrupt quid pro quo).

Among the documents released today is a set of text messages between American and Ukrainian officials, discussing a statement that Ukrainian officials understood was essential to getting the administration to agree to a White House meeting. On the evening of August 12, Yermak sent a draft statement to Kurt Volker, then a special envoy to Ukraine.

“Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians,” Yermak’s draft stated. “I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, which in return with prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.”

But that wasn’t enough for the Americans. Rudy Giuliani, Volker and Sondland both testified, insisted that any Ukrainian statement mention two specific things. The next afternoon, on a new chain adding Sondland, Volker sent Yermak an edited draft. “Following is text with insert at the end for the 2 key items."

[...]

Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in return will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.

The “2 key items” are indeed important, because they connect directly back to Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky and the president’s obsessions. On that call, he brought up a baseless conspiracy theory holding that Ukraine was behind hacking in the 2016 U.S. election. In their testimony, both Volker and Sondland separately recounted an angry outburst from the president in an Oval Office meeting, in which he attacked Ukraine for its supposed opposition to his candidacy in 2016. “They tried to take me down,” the ambassadors each recalled him saying.

  The Atlantic

Saddam Hussein tried to kill my dad!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeachment: Bribery

Any public corruption prosecutor familiar with the federal bribery statute and self-dealing cases will recognize that firsthand witnesses, such as Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, Mulvaney, and Trump himself, have now offered evidence to all the elements of the offense. The bribery law—18 U.S.C. § 201(b)—is easy to understand. The elements, as they pertain here, are as follows:

Whoever, being a public official … corruptly directly or indirectly demands or seeks … anything of value for himself or some other person in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act …

has committed the felony. I believe the federal bribery crime, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, also gets at the heart of the self-dealing issue more effectively than some alternative theories of criminal behavior, such as “honest services fraud” (which has some complex legal issues associated with it) or foreign campaign finance violations (which tend to involve monetary help apparently lacking here).

[...]

Parnas and Fruman have already been indicted for the campaign finance violations allegedly committed in a bribery scheme (described in the indictment) to gain the dismissal of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, with the aid of then-Rep. Pete Sessions (who is cooperating with investigators).

[...]

In late April, encouraged by Giuliani, Trump reportedly overrode State Department resistance and ordered the dismissal of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

[...]

[Secretary of Energy Rick] Perry has publicly summarized the guidance he received from Giuliani in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. According to Perry, Trump and Giuliani in following weeks again and again reiterated several specific demands, of which information regarding the Bidens was only one. The demands were to be made under the guise of forcing Ukraine to undertake an “anti-corruption” effort. As Trump, Perry and Mulvaney directly attest, the actual demands were to find “evidence” for a Democratic-Ukrainian conspiracy in the election of 2016.

Specifically, they included demands:

To seek “evidence” that in 2016 Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the criminal cyberattacks against the Clinton campaign.
To seek “evidence” that in 2016 Ukrainians, perhaps with help from Clinton operatives, fabricated or corruptly released the “black ledger” of evidence about the relationship of the former, pro-Russia, Ukrainian regime to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort (which contributed to Manafort’s resignation that year and his later felony convictions).
To seek “evidence”that in 2016 Ukrainians had acted corruptly to help create the so-called “Steele dossier” of investigative speculation about the Trump-Russia relationships.
To seek “evidence” that in 2016 Vice President Biden had been acting to protect the interests of a Ukrainian firm, Burisma, and his son Hunter (then on a Burisma board of advisers) when he joined in the international effort to pressure then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to replace his prosecutor-general, Viktor Shokin.

[...]

Federal bribery law does not require that the value be in money. As the Department of Justice Criminal Resource Manual points out, such things include “intangible as well as tangible things” and “have been broadly construed to focus on the worth attached to the bribe by the defendant, rather than its commercial value.”

[...]

[A]ny prosecutor familiar with the federal bribery statute, and any lawyer familiar with self-dealing cases, will recognize all the elements of the offense. Under the law, the quid pro quo need not be explicit, and need only be intended, although in this case there was actually direct bargaining about how Ukraine must meet the demands as a condition of the various U.S. official acts to maintain good relations and aid. Even before Mulvaney’s public admission, the nature of the quid pro quo seems to have been unusually clear.

[...]

There is no reliable evidence that the allegations about Ukrainian-Democratic collusion in 2016 are true. But Trump, Giuliani and Mulvaney can argue that, even if their 2016 conspiracy theories are false, they sincerely believed in them and thus did not act “corruptly.”

[...]

Even if Trump and Giuliani sincerely believe that Trump was wronged in the 2016 election or that his opponents are criminals, this does not make their 2019 desire for vindication, revenge or political advantage into a public, rather than private, interest. If they think Americans have committed crimes, they could have brought those allegations to the public institutions that investigate such allegations, which must follow certain rules—including in an international investigation. Trump and Giuliani did not do that. What they therefore must prove, against the prima facie evidence of bad, private intent, is that they really believed—even falsely—that working on these 2016 allegations would help clean up Ukrainian politics in 2019.

There are four big problems with this defensive cover story.

First, Trump ran the bargaining with Ukraine through his private lawyer, Giuliani, not through public channels.

[...]

As a private citizen, Giuliani was unconstrained by ethics rules, conflict of interest rules or any other restrictions set in place to make sure that public work is done in the public interest. Since individuals like Parnas had, in fact, retained Giuliani too (paying him half a million dollars just last August, according to Giuliani), such concerns were hardly theoretical.

It is revealing that, when Trump escalated the pressure in July to withhold aid—something Giuliani could not do for him—Trump managed this through Mulvaney, as news reports have shown. He thus chose to bypass the national security adviser, John Bolton, and the National Security Council process. Again, this is evidence that the motives were essentially personal and not the design of a foreign policy move to help Ukraine.

Second, the Trump and Giuliani demands had nothing to do with the long-standing anti-corruption agenda with Ukraine. That agenda was well-known.

It is revealing that at no time did the Trump administration make any diplomatic effort to persuade others across the administration or in the IMF or the EU that its 2016 theories should be made part of the Ukraine anti-corruption policy agenda. It is also revealing that the government professionals actually working on anti-corruption efforts with Ukraine did not believe that these demands were part of that agenda, once they learned of them.

Third, the Trump and Giuliani demands would have actually knocked down the existing Ukrainian anti-corruption efforts. One of the main targets of anti-corruption efforts were corrupt and unqualified prosecutors general who stymied investigations and blocked prosecutions, like Viktor Shokin. Yet Shokin is an indispensable ally in Giuliani’s work. Shokin appears to have provided an affidavit fingering Biden to lawyers for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who himself may have been in business with Parnas and Fruman and is seeking to avoid extradition to face federal charges in the United States.

One of the sad ironies of the Biden tangle is that the Western pressure to dismiss Shokin, in which Vice President Biden joined, was not likely to help Burisma, as Trump has alleged. On the contrary, it was likely to threaten Burisma.

[...]

Fourth, at the time it began using the “anti-corruption” cover story, the Trump administration had just officially certified that Ukrainian anti-corruption efforts were satisfactory. Congressional aid could not be released unless the Trump administration certified to Congress that Ukraine was making adequate progress on corruption, at least as it might affect military aid. On May 23, the administration made that certification. [...] In July, when Trump and Mulvaney decided to claim “anti-corruption” as a cover story to block the aid, they did not withdraw the certification to Congress.

[...]

Another cover story, that the aid was held up because Europeans were not contributing enough to help Ukraine, will not hold up well either. Both IMF and European contributions exceed the American effort. Nor did the Trump administration approach the Europeans after withholding aid to demand that Europe do more as a condition to release the U.S. aid.

[...]

I believe that if Perry had consulted a good lawyer beforehand, he might not have given the interview he gave to the Wall Street Journal, in which he may have unwittingly incriminated himself before he was ready to handle this. He conceded that he accepted private direction to represent these private demands in his share of the bargaining with Ukraine over official acts to welcome the new government.

  Lawfare Blog

And Perry is getting a bus ride beneath the wheels for it.

Sondland, by contrast, has clearly consulted a good lawyer, since his prepared statement took great care to emphasize that he, Sondland, was unaware of the specific demands that were actually being made underneath the “anti-corruption” cover story. Sondland says that he was troubled by Giuliani’s role and that, once he found out the nature of the asks, he was shocked and then distanced himself from the work.

Unfortunately for Mr. Sondland, Ambassador Taylor has contradicted him, and Taylor has contemporaneous notes.

Volker’s situation depends on the evidence about his conduct as a go-between. It could be at least partly exculpatory if he kept trying, even if unsuccessfully, to convert Trump and Giuliani’s unlawful private demands into requests that would be at least harmless and in the public interest.

Mulvaney does not appear to have consulted a lawyer before he publicly admitted to the quid pro quo in the strongest possible terms (“absolutely!”). Then, presumably having obtained legal advice, the White House issued the written statement that tried to walk back his admissions. This is not likely to help Mulvaney much with prosecutors or jurors.

[...]

The evidence so far presents a prima facie case of self-dealing meeting the elements of 201(b) (and also the “Bribery” offense that the Constitution says “shall” cause impeachment). The Trump and Giuliani demands to force Ukraine to seek evidence on their 2016 conspiracy theories were essentially private, in the pursuit of a very personal agenda. They were not policy choices developed to clean up Ukrainian politics. They would, in fact, have the opposite effect. Any knowledgeable official would have told them that—and my guess is that the evidence will show that every knowledgeable official in fact did try to tell them that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ambassador Taylor's "leaked" opening statement

Ambassador Taylor will be leaving his post soon, won't he?

The diplomat, William Taylor, painted a damaging portrait of events that directly tied Trump to a quid pro quo with Ukraine, according to his prepared remarks obtained by POLITICO and his responses to questions as described by sources in the room for the closed-door testimony.

[...]

The timeline Taylor laid out during his nearly 10 hours testifying before investigators is at the heart of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into the president. The 50-year veteran of government service systematically dismantled Trump’s repeated denials that he sought to leverage American military and diplomatic might to coerce an ally into a coordinated campaign to damage his potential 2020 rival. Trump himself and his congressional allies did not attempt on Tuesday to dispute the substance of Taylor’s claims, which were based on copious notes. Instead, the White House attacked Taylor personally, saying he was part of a band of “radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.”

  Politico

Sad!

“It is a rancorous story about whistle-blowers, Mr. Giuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption and interference in elections,” Taylor said, referring to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was deeply involved in the shadow effort.

[...]

Taylor also testified that Sondland said Trump personally told him that he wanted Ukraine to “state publicly” that it would open such probes, before the U.S. would release the aid, which is viewed as critical for combating Russia’s aggression in the region. Taylor repeatedly underscored the damage that even a temporary hold on the aid had done to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, at a time when the budding democracy was resisting an advance by Russian forces and fighting corruption at the highest levels of the government.

[...]

“The body language of the people hearing it was, ‘holy s---’ — seriously,” Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in reference to Taylor’s opening statement.

[...]

“I’ll tell you, as a former State Department political appointee, in my experience the difference between career folks and political appointees is the career folks take very good notes,” Malinowski said, hinting that Taylor provided corroboration to back up his recollections. Lawmakers roundly criticized Sondland, a political appointee and a donor to the 2016 Trump campaign, for failing to recall certain events and conversations during his deposition last week.

You don't usually keep notes if you know what you're doing is unethical and/or illegal.

Sondland’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. Sondland has emphasized that he wants to provide notes and documents to the committee but has been blocked by the State Department.

Possibly untrue. But, if true, it means Sondland knows there are notes that are damning to the President.

Congressional Republicans were more muted, but they showed no immediate signs of breaking with Trump despite the latest bombshells.

He could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the president's lead defender in the room, was tight-lipped as he emerged from the closed-door deposition for a lunch break. He praised what he described as GOP lawyers’ effective questioning of Taylor but declined to say whether it yielded exculpatory information.

And we all know that Jim Jordan would have been shouting it coming out the door if that were the case.

A source who attended the deposition said a phone call between Taylor and Sondland was a key episode about which Taylor provided new information. That conversation came at Sondland’s request after Taylor, in one of the text messages released earlier this month, questioned whether the military assistance and possible White House meeting are “conditioned on investigations.”

“After today, Mr. Sondland is going to have some explaining to do,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) said.

The acting US ambassador to Kyiv has provided congressional committees conducting impeachment hearings a detailed account of how Donald Trump repeatedly sought to make a summit meeting and military aid to Ukraine conditional on its government launching investigations into the president’s political opponents.

Bill Taylor’s testimony was the latest in a series of depositions by serving and former administration officials, as part of the impeachment inquiry, [and] it was the most detailed and damning to date.

Taylor, who took over as acting ambassador in June, presented his testimony behind closed doors on Capitol Hill but copies of his opening statement soon leaked.

The veteran diplomat said that soon after arriving in Kyiv, he became concerned “our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular informal channel of US policymaking, and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons”.

Taylor said this irregular channel was run by Trump through several emissaries: the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, the departing energy secretary, Rick Perry, the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and the special Ukraine envoy, Kurt Volker.

They became focused solely on persuading the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to announce investigations that would damage Democrats and especially Joe Biden [...] .

[...]

According to Taylor’s statement [...] Sondland, made clear in a phone call that both military aid and a White House meeting with Trump were dependent on the launch of two investigations.

  Guardian

Ambassador Taylor may be "resigning" soon.

Bill Taylor's statement at Time.

Exerpts:

For 50 years, I have served the country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an infantry officer for six years, including with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a member of a Senate staff; then at NATO; then with the State Department here and abroad in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and more recently, as Executive Vice President of the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace.

[...]

My background and experience are nonpartisan and I have been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985.

[...]

At the outset, I would like to convey several key points. First, Ukraine is a strategic partner of the United States, important for the security of our country as well as Europe. Second, Ukraine is, right at this moment—while we sit in this room—and for the last five years, under armed attack from Russia. Third, the security assistance we provide is crucial to Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression, and, more importantly, sends a signal to Ukrainians—and Russians— that we are Ukraine’s reliable strategic partner. And finally, as the Committees are now aware, I said on September 9 in a message to Ambassador Gordon Sondland that withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be “crazy.”

[...]

I cared about Ukraine’s future and the important U.S. interests there. So, when Secretary Pompeo asked me to go back to Kyiv [to replace ambassador Yovanovitch], I wanted to say “yes.”

But it was not an easy decision. The former Ambassador, Masha Yovanovitch, had been treated poorly, caught in a web of political machinations both in Kyiv and in Washington. I feared that those problems were still present. When I talked to her about accepting the offer, however, she urged me to go, both for policy reasons and for the morale of the embassy.

[...]

I could be effective only if the U.S. policy of strong support for Ukraine—strong diplomatic support along with robust security, economic, and technical assistance—were to continue and if I had the backing of the Secretary of State to implement that policy. [...] So during my meeting with Secretary Pompeo on May 28, I made clear to him and the others present that if U.S. policy toward Ukraine changed, he would not want me posted there and I could not stay. He assured me that the policy of strong support for Ukraine would continue and that he would support me in defending that policy.

[...]

I returned to Kyiv on June 17, carrying the original copy of a letter President Trump signed the day after I met with the Secretary. In that letter, President Trump congratulated President Zelenskyy on his election victory and invited him to a meeting in the Oval Office. I also brought with me a framed copy of the Secretary’s declaration that the United States would never recognize the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea.

[...]

On June 27, Ambassador Sondland told me during a phone conversation that President Zelenskyy needed to make clear to President Trump that he, President Zelenskyy, was not standing, in the way of “investigations.”

[...]

I sensed something odd when Ambassador Sondland told me on June 28 that he did not wish to include most of the regular interagency participants in a call planned with President Zelenskyy later that day. Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador Volker, Secretary Perry, and I were on this call, dialing in from different locations. However, Ambassador Sondland said that he wanted to make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President Zelenskyy to the call. Also, before President Zelenskyy joined the call, Ambassador Volker separately told the U.S. participants that he, Ambassador Volker, planned to be explicit with President Zelenskyy in a one-on-one meeting in Toronto on July 2 about what President Zelenskyy should do to get the White House meeting. [...] Ambassador Volker noted that he would relay that President Trump wanted to see rule of law, transparency, but also, specifically, cooperation on investigations to “get to the bottom of things.” Once President Zelenskyy joined the call, the conversation was focused on energy policy and the Stanytsia-Luhanska bridge. President Zelenskyy also said he looked forward to the White House visit President Trump had offered in his May 29 letter.

[...]

By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani.

[...]

In a regular NSC secure video-conference call on July 18, I heard a staff person from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) say that there was a hold on security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why. Toward the end of an otherwise normal meeting, a voice on the call—the person was off-screen—said that she was from OMB and that her boss had instructed her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice. I and others sat in astonishment—the Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons, but also the assurance of U.S. support. All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the President to the Chief of Staff to OMB. In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened. The irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy.

[...]

My understanding, was that the Secretaries of Defense and State, the CIA Director, and the National Security Advisor sought a joint meeting with the President to convince him to release the hold, but such a meeting was hard to schedule and the hold lasted well into September.

Hard to schedule because His Lardship's "executive time" couldn't be interrupted?

The next day on the phone, Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman tried to reassure me that they were not aware of any official change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, OMB’s announcement notwithstanding. They did confirm that the hold on security assistance for Ukraine came from Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and that the Chief of Staff maintained a skeptical view of Ukraine.

In the same July 19 phone call, they gave me an account of the July 10 meeting with the Ukrainian officials at the White House. Specifically, they told me that Ambassador Sondland had connected “investigations” with an Oval Office meeting for President Zelenskyy, which so irritated Ambassador Bolton that he abruptly ended the meeting, telling Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman that they should have nothing to do with domestic politics. He also directed Dr. Hill to “brief the lawyers.” Dr. Hill said that Ambassador Bolton referred to this as a “drug deal” after the July 10 meeting. Ambassador Bolton opposed a call between President Zelenskyy and President Trump out of concern that it “would be a disaster.”

Needless to say, the Ukrainians in the meetings were confused. Ambassador Bolton, in the regular Ukraine policy decision-making channel, wanted to talk about security, energy, and reform; Ambassador Sondland, a participant in the irregular channel, wanted to talk about the connection between a White House meeting and Ukrainian investigations.

Also during our July 19 call, Dr. Hill informed me that Ambassador Volker had met with Mr. Giuliani to discuss Ukraine. This caught me by surprise. The next day I asked Ambassador Volker about that meeting, but received no response.

[...]

Later on July 19 and in the early morning of July 20 (Kyiv time), I received text messages on a three-way WhatsApp text conversation with Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, a record of which l understand has already been provided to the Committees by Ambassador Volker. Ambassador Sondland said that a call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy would take place soon. Ambassador Volker said that what was “[m]ost impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation—and address any specific personnel issues—if there are any.”

[...]

Also on July 20, I had a phone conversation with Mr. Danyliuk, during which he conveyed to me that President Zelenskyy did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election campaign. The next day I texted both Ambassadors Volker and Sondland about President Zelenskyy’s concern.

On July 25, President Trump and President Zelenskyy had the long-awaited phone conversation. Strangely, even though I was Chief of Mission and was scheduled to meet with President Zelenskyy along with Ambassador Volker the following day, I received no readout of the call from the White House. The Ukrainian government issued a short, cryptic summary.

[...]

Although I spent the morning of July 26 with President Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials, the first summary of the Trump-Zelenskyy call that I heard from anybody inside the U.S. government was during a phone call I had with Tim Morrison, Dr. Hill’s recent replacement at the NSC, on July 28. Mr. Morrison told me that the call “could have been better” and that President Trump had suggested that President Zelenskyy or his staff meet with Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. I did not see any official readout of the call until it was publicly released on September 25.

[...]

On August 16, I exchanged text messages with Ambassador Volker in which I learned that Mr. Yermak had asked that the United States submit an official request for an investigation into Burisma’s alleged violations of Ukrainian law, if that is what the United States desired. A formal U.S. request to the Ukrainians to conduct an investigation based on violations of their own law struck me as improper, and I recommended to Ambassador Volker that we “stay clear.” To find out the legal aspects of the question, however, I gave him the name of a Deputy Assistant Attorney General whom I thought would be the proper point of contact for seeking a U.S. referral for a foreign investigation.

By mid-August, because the security assistance had been held for over a month for no reason that I could discern, I was beginning to fear that the longstanding U.S. policy of strong support for Ukraine was shifting. [...] My concerns deepened the next day, on August 22, during a phone conversation with Mr. Morrison. I asked him if there had been a change in policy of strong support for Ukraine, to which he responded, “it remains to be seen.” He also told me during this call that the “President doesn’t want to provide any assistance at all.” That was extremely troubling to me.

[...]

Just days later, on August 27, Ambassador Bolton arrived in Kyiv and met with President Zelenskyy. [...] Near the end of Ambassador Bolton’s visit, I asked to meet him privately, during which I expressed to him my serious concern about the withholding of military assistance to Ukraine while the Ukrainians were defending their country from Russian aggression. Ambassador Bolton recommended that I send a first-person cable to Secretary Pompeo directly, relaying my concerns. I wrote and transmitted such a cable on August 29, describing the “folly” I saw in withholding military aid to Ukraine at a time when hostilities were still active in the east and when Russia was watching closely to gauge the level of American support for the Ukrainian government. I told the Secretary that I could not and would not defend such a policy. Although I received no specific response, I heard that soon thereafter, the Secretary carried the cable with him to a meeting at the White House focused on security assistance for Ukraine.

The same day that I sent my cable to the Secretary, August 29, Mr. Yermak contacted me and was very concerned, asking about the withheld security assistance. The hold that the White House had placed on the assistance had just been made public that day in a Politico story. At that point, I was embarrassed that I could give him no explanation for why it was withheld.

It had still not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could be related to the “investigations.” That, however, would soon change.

On September 1, just three days after my cable to Secretary Pompeo, President Zelenskyy met Vice President Pence at a bilateral meeting in Warsaw. [...] I contacted Mr. Danyliuk to let him know that the delay of U.S. security assistance was an “all or nothing” proposition, in the sense that if the White House did not lift the hold prior to the end of the fiscal year (September 30), the funds would expire and Ukraine would receive nothing. I was hopeful that at the bilateral meeting or shortly thereafter, the White House would lift the hold, but this was not to be. Indeed, I received a readout of the Pence-Zelenskyy meeting over the phone from Mr. Morrison, during which he told me President Zelenskyy had opened the meeting by asking the Vice President about security cooperation. The Vice President did not respond substantively, but said that he would talk to President Trump that night.

[...]

During this same phone call I had with Mr. Morrison, he went on to describe a conversation Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelenskyy committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.

[...]

This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance—not just the White House meeting—was conditioned on the investigations.

Very concerned, on that same day I sent Ambassador Sondland a text message asking if “we [are] now saying that security assistance and [a] WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Ambassador Sondland responded asking me to call him, which I did. During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskyy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Ambassador 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 Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations—in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, “everything” was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy “in a public box” by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.

And there it is.

I told Ambassador Sondland that President Trump should have more respect for another head of state and [...] asked Ambassador Sondland to push back on President Trump’s demand. Ambassador Sondland pledged to try. We also discussed the possibility that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, rather than President Zelenskyy, would make a statement about investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr’s probe into the investigation of interference in the 2016 elections.

[...]

On September 5, I hosted Senators Johnson and Murphy for a visit to Kyiv. During their visit, we met with President Zelenskyy. His first question to the senators was about the withheld security assistance. My recollection of the meeting is that both senators stressed that bipartisan support for Ukraine in Washington was Ukraine’s most important strategic asset and that President Zelenskyy should not jeopardize that bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics.

[...]

But the push to make President Zelenskyy publicly commit to investigations of Burisma and alleged interference in the 2016 election showed how the official foreign policy of the United States was undercut by the irregular efforts led by Mr. Giuliani.

[...]

Two days later, on September 7, I had a conversation with Mr. Morrison in which he described a phone conversation earlier that day between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump. Mr. Morrison said that he had a “sinking feeling” after learning about this conversation from Ambassador Sondland. According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a “quid pro quo.” But President Trump did insist that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskyy should want to do this himself.

[...]

The following day, on September 8, Ambassador Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he had talked to President Trump as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was adamant that President Zelenskyy, himself, had to “clear things up and do it in public.” President Trump said it was not a “quid pro quo.” Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelenskyy and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelenskyy did not “clear things up” in public, we would be at a “stalemate.” I understood a “stalemate” to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance. Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelenskyy agreeing to make a public statement in an interview with CNN.

Blackmail, in essence.

Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check. Ambassador Volker used the same terms several days later while we were together at the Yalta European Strategy Conference. I argued to both that the explanation made no sense: the Ukrainians did not “owe” President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was “crazy,” as I had said in my text message to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker on September 9.

Finally, I learned on September 11 that the hold had been lifted and that the security assistance would be provided.

The news of the quid pro quo had by then been leaked and published by the Washington Post on September 5.

My fear at the time was that since Ambassador Sondland had told me President Zelenskyy already agreed to do a CNN interview, President Zelenskyy would make a statement regarding “investigations” that would have played into domestic U.S. politics. I sought to confirm through Mr. Danyliuk that President Zelenskyy was not planning to give such an interview to the media. While Mr. Danyliuk initially confirmed that on September 12, I noticed during a meeting on the morning of September 13 at President Zelenskyy’s office that Mr. Yermak looked uncomfortable in response to the question. Again, I asked Mr. Danyliuk to confirm that there would be no CNN interview, which he did.

On September 25 at the UN General Assembly session in New York City, President Trump met President Zelenskyy face-to-face. He also released the transcript of the July 25 call. The United States gave the Ukrainians virtually no notice of the release, and they were livid. Although this was the first time I had seen the details of President Trump’s July 25 call with President Zelenskyy, in which he mentioned Vice President Biden, I had come to understand well before then that “investigations” was a term that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland used to mean matters related to the 2016 elections, and to investigations of Burisma and the Bidens.

Complete statement.

UPDATE:

Everything and everyone Donald Trump touches

Add another orange jumpsuit for Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. (I can only imagine that people who have been previously canned are thanking their lucky stars they weren't still around.)

In late May, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting that stripped control of the country’s relationship with Ukraine from those who had the most expertise at the National Security Council and the State Department.

Instead, Mulvaney put an unlikely trio in charge of managing the U.S.-Ukraine account amid worrisome signs of a new priority.

[...]

The work of those “three amigos,” as they came to call themselves — diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, plus Energy Secretary Rick Perry — has come to light in recent days through newly disclosed text messages and the testimony of government witnesses appearing before an impeachment inquiry in Congress.

[...]

Some of his defenders have said he knew very little about the details of the trio’s efforts in Ukraine and was mainly orchestrating meetings for the president.

“I don’t remember any substantive conversation with Mick. I don’t remember him approving, disapproving, getting involved, having an interest,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani.

  WaPo

Being Trump's Chief of Staff (acting) is getting a little too close to Trump himself. I hope Giuliani is getting SOMEthing for his efforts to protect his "client".

But current and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said Mulvaney contributed substantially to the unfolding political crisis, both through his connection to key events related to the attempt to pressure Kiev and through his general approach to the chief of staff job, which was driven by a perceived reluctance to displease the president.

U.S. officials said Mulvaney met frequently with Sondland and that details of their discussions were kept from then-National Security Adviser John Bolton and other officials.

[...]

Perhaps most significantly, Mulvaney — at the direction of the president — placed a hold on nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine in the weeks before Trump used a July 25 phone call to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue Giuliani’s agenda.

[...]

When some in the White House questioned the legality of blocking funds to Ukraine — funds approved by Congress to help fend off Russian attacks on its sovereignty — U.S. officials said Mulvaney told staff that he had determined that the money could be turned on and off with no legal consequence.

Because Trump and Giuliani told him that?

During his call with Zelensky, Trump emphasized how much aid Ukraine received from the United States, noting that he didn’t believe America’s largesse had been reciprocated. He then asked for “a favor, though,” pushing Zelensky to revive an investigation of an energy company, Burisma, that had paid Biden’s son Hunter to serve on its board.

Trump also prodded Zelensky to dig into a conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine — not Russia — that had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and that hacked computer hardware from the Democratic National Committee had been smuggled to Ukraine to hide the evidence.

[...]

U.S. officials said the friction between Mulvaney and Bolton led to a series of ruptures, including one on the day of the July 25 phone call.

[...]

Bolton, already troubled by the administration’s interactions with Ukraine, insisted that he alone handle the pre-call briefing with the [Ukrainian] president. But Sondland, who as U.S. ambassador to the European Union is based in Brussels, demanded that he also participate in the prep session.

Mulvaney backed Sondland, urging that he be allowed on the call, according to a White House official. When Bolton refused, Mulvaney appears to have again found a way to bypass the national security adviser. Bolton proceeded to brief the president solo, but then Sondland was patched through on a separate call.

In a July 26 interview on an English-language Ukranian television program, Sondland said he “actually spoke with President Trump just a few minutes before he placed the call.”

Right about now he's recognizing the enormity of that mistake.

Sondland “was talking to Mulvaney all the time,” said a former U.S. official familiar with their interactions. When confronted by Bolton or Hill, the official said, Sondland would rebuff them, saying he felt no obligation to coordinate with them because he had direct lines to Trump and Mulvaney.

And that one.

One of Mulvaney’s top aides, Rob Blair, listened to the Trump-Zelensky call and briefed Mulvaney afterward, a White House official said. The official said that Mulvaney began inquiring more urgently about the call only weeks later, after the whistleblower report surfaced.

Can we agree that Mulvaney is not up to the job?

A former South Carolina congressman who came to Washington as part of the 2010 tea party movement, Mulvaney was installed as acting chief of staff in January. His promotion followed the departure of an array of senior administration officials — including former defense secretary Jim Mattis — who seemed more inclined to challenge Trump’s decisions, especially on foreign policy.

“The fundamental issue . . . is that none of the president’s top advisers agree with his view of foreign policy. None of them,” said a former senior National Security Council official. “None of his principals share his views because they are so idiosyncratic.”

Mulvaney, by contrast, didn’t have strong opinions when it came to international affairs. He was more in sync with Trump.

[...]

Unlike Kelly, who often seemed to chafe at Trump’s impulsive decisions, officials said, Mulvaney’s primary goal often seemed to be pleasing the president.

Which he may be regretting very soon.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.