Final deposition transcripts

Mark Sandy

Philip Reeker

More impeachment hearing transcripts released

While Congress was out of session for the Veterans Day holiday, investigators released a transcript for their behind-closed-doors deposition of Laura Cooper, a top Defense Department official who oversees Ukraine, along with two other former aides to Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine.

[...]

Along with Cooper, investigators also released transcripts of joint depositions with Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson, two former assistants to Volker. As The Hill’s Olivia Beavers writes, while all three witnesses are relatively minor players, they offered information for House investigators who are trying to determine whether Trump used the aid or the promise of a White House meeting as leverage to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open probes into Trump’s political rivals.

  The Hill

Laura Cooper transcript
Catherine Croft transcript
Christopher Anderson transcript

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.

Taylor testimony transcript released

Taylor 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:

Yovanovitch testimony

From The Daily Beast:

Yovanovich was targeted by Giuliani and his associates because she was viewed as an obstacle to their efforts to get the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings and any role from Ukraine in the 2016 U.S. election.

[...]

The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., sent out a tweet in March calling her a “joker.”

[...]

Yovanovitch said that Phil Reeker, a senior State Department official, told her after she was recalled from Kyiv that Trump had wanted her out since mid-summer 2018, at least.

[...]

Reeker told her that Pompeo had tried to protect her, but that he “was no longer able to do that.” Yovanovich said she asked to meet with Ulrich Brechbuhl, a top State Department lawyer, but he didn’t agree to a meeting.

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Yovanovitch said that criticisms of her from conservative media figures eventually became so pronounced that a senior State Department official reached out to Fox News host Sean Hannity about his coverage of her.

“What I was told by Phil Reeker was that the Secretary or perhaps somebody around him was going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on FOX News to say, ‘You know, what is going on?’” she told lawmakers. “‘I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, telI me, and if not, stop.’ And I understand that that call was made. I don't know whether it was the Secretary or somebody else in his inner circle. And for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down.”

During this ordeal, Yovanovich did receive guidance from one of the president’s key point men on Ukraine, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. His proposal was that she tweet her support of Trump.

“He said, you know, you need to go big or go home… Tweet out there that you support the President, and that all these are lies and everything else.”

Yovanovich replied that such an approach, as a diplomat, would be inappropriate.

  The Daily Beast

From NBC:

Yovanovitch departed Ukraine in May, months ahead of her scheduled departure, after coming under attack from right-wing media, which alleged she was hostile to the president. Her departure set off alarm bells among Democrats in Congress but the State Department said at the time her exit was planned.

Yovanovitch testified to House investigators Oct. 11 that Trump had personally pressured the State Department to remove her, even though a top department official assured her that she had "done nothing wrong."

[...]

Yovanovitch recalled that Carol Perez, the director general of the Foreign Service, "said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington. And I was like, what? What happened? And she said, I don't know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane."

According to the intelligence community whistleblower complaint at the heart of Democrats' impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch's tenure was cut short because she had run afoul of the then-prosecutor general in Ukraine, Yuri Lutsenko, and President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who had been working to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate the Biden family.Lutsenko at one point alleged she had given him a "do not prosecute" list. The State Department has said the assertion was an outright fabrication and Lutsenko himself later walked back his comments.

[...]

Yovanovitch said she had wanted Pompeo to issue a statement that said she had his "full confidence," but the request was turned down. Yovanovitch, according to the transcript, said that acting Assistant Secretary of State Philip Reeker told her they were exercising "caution" because any statement "could be undermined" by the president.

  NBC

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

The transcripts roll out

Transcript of Marie Yovanovitch testimony

Transcript of McKinley testimony

Volker and Sondland tomorrow.