This is where we are, America

Like father, like son

He's too stupid to shut up.

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

UPDATE:

Disgusting - continuing witness intimidation coming out of the White House

UPDATE:

Roast

But he did it in a mild-mannered way.

And, yes, Mike Pompeo is complicit.

Rosenberg was Trump's first acting DEA administrator, an Obama appointee, who resigned after eight months because, he claimed (properly), Trump has no respect for the law.

In a nutshell

Nancy has his number

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

Yovanovitch testimony conclusion

The public attendees in the room gave Marie Yovanovitch a standing ovation as she left the hearing room.  Hopefully, she feels a little vindicated, and at least affirmed that she did the right thing in agreeing to testify.

Once again, the Republicans were mostly shameless.  Adam Schiff, I think, has decided he's had enough.  He rode herd on them mercilessly.  As he should at this point.  They'll be squealing about it.  As will Fox News punditry. 

The hearing on CSPAN can be seen here.

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

Speaking of shades of Kavanaugh...

So far in the Yovanovitch hearing

Nunes read out Trump's released transcript of his first "perfect" letter to Zelensky, which was just a congratulatory call on Zelensky's election win.  Schiff thanked Nunes and Trump and demanded Trump release all the other documents the Committee has been asking for.  In a pig's eye.

Republicans then tried to disrupt, much as they did in Wednesday's hearing demanding a response to their list of witnesses they want to call.  Republican Elise Stefanik interrupted Schiff, asking for a parliamentary inquiry, and when denied, she went on asking for a point of order, which Schiff then allowed.  She complained that Democrats were not allowing Republican witnesses or allowing witnesses to answer Republican questions - the same thing she brought up in Wednesday's hearing at the start.  Schiff gaveled her out, saying that was not a proper point of order.  When others jumped on the case - mainly Jim Jordan -  Schiff decided not to let them take over and denied them the opportunity to speak.  There was a lot of gavel banging.  And there'll be a lot of whinging on Fox.  (I wonder why Stefanik is the first to jump in with a complaint both days.  It was planned, of course, but why her?)

Also Trump is watching the hearing and nasty-tweeting Ambassador Yovanovitch. Schiff read it out for the record.

No doubt witness intimidation will be a part of the articles.

I'm going to skip Nunes' 45-minutes of time.  If I see any interesting comments about it online, I'll post.

UPDATE:

They were trying to avoid it yesterday because the witnesses were men.  We'll see what they try to do today with a woman.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:  In a nutshell...

UPDATE:

Bingo.

UPDATE:  Now I get it.

Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testimony

Yovanovitch’s testimony illustrates just what kind of a mess we’re in.

But I think we all knew that stuff anyway, even before Yovanovitch sat down before the committees. What I, at least, didn't know was the depth of the madness that has entered American policymaking with this president* and his pack of bumbling buccaneers. All through the extended fandango through which she lost her job, Yovanovich is advised that, if she wanted to keep it, she'd do well to kiss the delicate presidential hindquarters lest they shatter from her neglect. The messenger was Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador To Bullshit Alibis.

You need to, you know, tweet out there that you support the president. He said: "You know the president. Well, maybe you don’t know him personally, but you know, you know, the sorts of things that he likes."

Dance, monkey, dance! Yovanovitch declined, and lost her job.

This all came as the entire diplomatic apparatus in that part of the world was tasked with getting rid of Ambassador Yovanovitch, and was put in service of a lunatic conspiracy theory and at the disposal of Sean Hannity.

[...]

This was so egregious that, according to Yovanovich, the State Department put in a call to Hannity to tell him to put up or shut up regarding the smears of Yovanovich that seemed to be coming from the shady precincts within which Giuliani was doing business in Ukraine. But, still, Hannity?

  Charles P Pierce

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

Diving deeper

The State Department’s third-ranking official is expected to tell House impeachment investigators Wednesday that political considerations were behind the agency’s refusal to deliver a robust defense of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

People familiar with the matter say the highest-ranking career diplomat in the foreign service, David Hale, plans to say that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior officials determined that defending Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch would hurt the effort to free up U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.

  APNews

Sure, that's the reason.

Hale, who arrived Wednesday morning to testify behind closed doors, will also say that the State Department worried about the reaction from President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, also one of the strongest advocates for removing the ambassador.

More like it.

Two other witnesses who were scheduled for Wednesday — Russ Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and Rick Perry, the Energy secretary — are not expected to show up.

[...]

According to the people familiar with the matter, he will say he tried to distance himself and the department from the matter by removing himself from email chains about Yovanovitch.

So brave.

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

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.

[...]

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.

State to turn over Ukraine documents

The State Department has agreed to release documents related to President Trump’s handling of aid to Ukraine, potentially providing ammunition to the impeachment probe now being conducted by Democrats in the House of Representatives.

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by American Oversight, a watchdog group affiliated with progressive causes. That lawsuit was initially filed in the spring, after Trump dismissed U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch.

[...]

Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., told the State Department it had to turn over Ukraine-related documents, citing “public interest” that he said tilted “heavily in favor of disclosure.”

[...]

Among the documents to be included in the trove are communications between departmental officials and Trump’s private lawyers and associates, in particular Rudolph Giuliani, Victoria Toensing or Joseph diGenova.

[...]

The order also covers records created by or pertaining to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been criticized for putting Trump’s political prospects, and possibly his own business interests, over the nation’s foreign policy goals. Two close associates of Pompeo, Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Bulatao, are also named in the request, along with several others.

The agreement will also require the State Department to turn over calendar entries pertaining to Yovanovitch’s dismissal, as well as any meetings with Giuliani, and meetings pertaining to a potential Biden investigation in Ukraine.

The two sides could not agree on whether the State Department needed to turn over readouts of the July 25 phone call in which Trump is alleged to have engaged in a quid pro quo with Zelensky. State Department lawyers maintain those records “have a high likelihood of being classified and/or privileged.”

[...]

The agreement between the State Department and American Oversight stipulates that the documents be turned over by Nov. 22, by which time the impeachment inquiry could well be in its public stage.

  Yahoo

It definitely will be. Do you trust them to turn over all the documents requested? I don't.

Pushing back on Trumpworld's smear attacks

Glad to see CNN's Brianna Keilar knocking back new CNN contributor Sean Duffy for his shameful treatment of Alexander Vindman.  Now CNN should can him.

There are bad first days at work and then there is Sean Duffy’s first day at CNN. Appearing as the network’s latest pro-Trump talking head last week, the former Wisconsin congressman (and Real World: Boston castmember) claimed that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election was a false flag operation conducted by Ukrainians, not the Russians. The rest of the panel on State of the Union practically shouted him down: “This is a disputed, absurd conspiracy theory that you’re talking about right now,” conservative pundit Amanda Carpenter said.

Duffy tried his luck again the next day, suggesting that all Donald Trump wanted was to find the “real” DNC hackers, i.e. anybody but the Russians. CNN host Alisyn Camerota cut him off. “That’s a conspiracy theory,” she said indignantly.

CNN executives certainly knew what they were getting into when they hired Duffy. A five-term congressman and Tea Party darling, Duffy has a long, well-documented history of making inflammatory and dishonest comments. Appearing on the network in February of 2017, Duffy defended Trump’s Muslim ban by saying Middle Eastern terrorists are a more significant threat than white domestic terrorists because the latter commit “one-off” attacks. In the same interview he cited the “good things” that stemmed from Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. He has also suggested that George Soros was rigging elections, that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has “ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” and that the Democratic Party’s pro-choice policies intentionally targeted black communities and amounted to “infanticide.” Unfortunately for CNN and any other organization that clinging to a both-sides model of journalism, Duffy is probably the best the network can get. [...] As Republicans become more extreme, it’s become near-impossible to find non-loony ones to fill airtime on cable news.

Duffy, who resigned his congressional seat this summer, will undoubtedly say outrageous and absurd things nearly every time he appears on air. That’s because he isn’t there to make cogent arguments. He is there to act as a surrogate for the president and to show that CNN is still willing to hear from the president’s defenders.

[...]

Cable news outlets already have stables full of liberal and progressive talking heads. And there are plenty of sober analysts—Doris Kearns Goodwin types—available to shoot the shit on Sunday shows. Post-Trump, however, the Never Trump conservatives who had previously dutifully advanced Republican talking points were overpopulating cable news shows and editorial pages. There were few pro-Trump figures, particularly ones who could represent the president’s political base.

CNN, in particular, has hunted for the right pro-Trump pundit, with disastrous results. Jeffrey Lord, whose exchanges with Van Jones regularly went viral, was fired after tweeting “Sieg Heil” at the president of Media Matters. Jason Miller resigned after he was accused of “surreptitiously” dosing a woman he had impregnated with an abortion pill. Earlier this year, the network cut ties with two pro-Trump surrogates, Andre Bauer and Jack Kingston—the latter of whom suggested that Parkland gun control activists were being manipulated by Soros. Kayleigh McEnany left in 2017 to work for the Republican National Committee.

  New Republic

CNN needs to get over it.  There are no sane Trump supporters.  There is no honest defense of Trump to be made.  If people want lies and bullsht, let them stay with Fox.  Or Trump's new darling, OANN.

Everybody on these smear campaigns needs to be called out.

As expected, Trump cabal is smearing Ukraine deal witnesses

UPDATE:  And Ambassador Vindman:

“If you look at this lieutenant colonel’s background, he’s got a Purple Heart, he got hit by an IED in Iraq,” Brian Kilmeade said on “Fox & Friends.” “We also know he was born in the Soviet Union, immigrated with his family, young. He tends to feel simpatico with the Ukraine."

On CNN, former congressman Sean P. Duffy (R-Wis.) suggested that Vindman’s birthplace was important.

“It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense,” Duffy said. “I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy, but his main mission was to make sure that Ukraine got those weapons.” (Of course, Ukraine’s defense is still U.S. policy.)

[...]

What Trump prioritizes in migrants who come to the United States is self-sufficiency and assimilation. He prefers migrants from Europe over Africa or the Middle East. What he wants is Alexander Vindmans — until Alexander Vindman points out where the loyalties of Trump himself might be questionable.

[...]

“My family fled the Soviet Union when I was three and a half years old,” Vindman’s opening remarks read. “Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night. He stressed to us the importance of fully integrating into our adopted country. For many years, life was quite difficult. In spite of our challenging beginnings, my family worked to build its own American Dream."

The statement continues: “I have a deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom. I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend OUR country, irrespective of party or politics."

  WaPo

More American than the Trump cabal.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vinindman

I think Trump and the GOP, having already destroyed themselves with US intelligence agencies, are inexorably destroying themselves in the eyes of the US military.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

No.  They're not looking away.  They're going after him like rabid animals.

UPDATE:

Left: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman,

Right: Sebastian Gorka

Impeachment hearing testimony today: Sr White House official Alexander Vindman

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official overseeing Ukraine policy, plans to tell investigators, referring to Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into Joe Biden and his son.

[...]

“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained,” Vindman plans to say.

“This would all undermine U.S. national security,” Vindman adds. “Following the call, I again reported my concerns to NSC’s lead counsel.”

[...]

>Vindman, who will become the first White House official to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry, also plans to say that he reported Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky to the NSC’s top lawyer after listening in on the conversation from the White House situation room alongside other U.S. national security officials.

[...]

Vindman plans to testify that he first reported his Ukraine-related concerns to the NSC’s lead lawyer in early July, after a meeting between Ukraine’s top national security official and cadre of senior Trump administration officials, including Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Ambassadors Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland.

Vindman says that when the Ukrainians raised the prospect of a Trump-Zelensky meeting — a crucial step for Ukraine as its newly elected leader sought to showcase a united front against Russia — Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, interjected “to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting.” At that moment, Vindman says, then-national security adviser John Bolton “cut the meeting short.”

At a subsequent debriefing, Vindman says, Sondland “emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma.” Vindman says he confronted Sondland and called his statements “inappropriate” because “the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security.” Those concerns, he says, were echoed by Fiona Hill, who at the time served as the NSC’s top Russia policy official.

[...]

Both Vindman and Hill met with NSC lawyers on the same day, July 10, after Bolton abruptly ended the meeting with Ukraine’s top national security official, Oleksandr Danylyuk.

[...]

Sondland, for his part, told lawmakers earlier this month he didn’t remember discussing the Bidens with State Department or White House officials.

And he was at the capitol yesterday going over his testimony to figure out how he's going to weasel his way out of it when they call him up again.

His opening statement leans heavily on his military service and a “sense of duty” to his country.

“I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country, irrespective of party or politics,” Vindman writes in his opening statement, adding that his family fled the Soviet Union when he was just 3½ years old. Vindman was also wounded in an IED attack while serving in Iraq and later received a Purple Heart.

[...]

Vindman also says in his opening statement that he would be appearing before investigators under subpoena — an indication that he expects the White House to try to prevent him from testifying. He also says he is not the whistleblower who initially reported concerns about the White House’s handling of Ukraine to the intelligence community’s inspector general — though many of his concerns mirror the complaint that put the House on a path toward impeachment.

[...]

Vindman’s testimony also appears to corroborate aspects of William Taylor’s testimony before impeachment investigators last week. Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, directly connected Trump to a quid pro quo with Ukraine involving military aid and a White House meeting with Zelensky.

The White House accused Taylor of being part of a “coordinated smear campaign” against the president, calling his testimony “hearsay.”

[...]

A fellow White House official, Tim Morrison, who also serves on the National Security Council, is expected to testify on Thursday, and his lawyer has already indicated that Morrison plans to speak to lawmakers under subpoena, even if the White House objects.

  Politico

UPDATE:  Vindman's opening statement.


 And quick as you can say Jack Sprat...

Getting documents will hold up the impeachment proceedings

If Republicans want this to go quickly like they claim, they need to talk to have a talk with Pompeo and Trump.  They won't, because they don't want the documents out.

In what could prove a highly consequential ruling, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to start turning over documents regarding potentially improper White House influence on diplomacy in Ukraine.

The decision, part of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act, represents the first judicial order mandating that the Trump administration comply with a request for communications between diplomats, White House officials and outside power brokers like Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.

[...]

The documents were being requested by American Oversight, a progressive watchdog group in Washington, D.C. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act request when it noticed news reports that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, had been recalled. American Oversight filed a lawsuit in October, after the State Department failed to turn over the documents.

[...]

The Trump administration will now have 30 days to start turning over records and documents relating to the Ukraine affair, and though it could find legal pretext for refusing to do so, Wednesday’s ruling did appear to be a vindication of months-long efforts for American Oversight.

  Yahoo

Thirty days to shred documents and/or file an appeal.

...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:

Until they get state charges, Rudy can rely on a pardon for any convictions

[George] Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified that around January 2019 Giuliani requested a visa for former Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin to travel to the United States. Shokin had been pushed out of his position as Ukraine's top prosecutor in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including Biden, over concerns that he was not pursuing corruption cases.

Giuliani has previously told CNN he wanted to interview Shokin in person because the Ukrainian promised to reveal dirt on Democrats.

Kent told congressional investigators the State Department had objected to the request, and State did not grant the visa. Giuliani, Kent said, then appealed to the White House to have State reverse its decision. Rob Blair, a White House aide to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, consulted with State about the decision and sided with the department's rejection of the visa, according to a person familiar.

Shokin's visa was never granted, although Giuliani eventually spoke with Shokin over Skype.

  CNN

That sounds a little like it's not true that State was working with Giuliani in his efforts.

Concerns that Giuliani was inappropriately involved in shaping and driving the administration's Ukraine policy form a significant part of the intelligence community whistleblower's complaint, which prompted the ongoing impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump.

[...]

In their January 23 Skype interview, Shokin provided information, Giuliani has told CNN, about supposed coordination between Democrats and people in Ukraine, as well as claims about Biden's son Hunter Biden, who had sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings. Shokin's successor as prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, did travel to the US and spoke with Giuliani about these claims later.

Details from those interviews were included in a cache of documents Giuliani delivered to the State Department earlier this year, in hopes that the administration would investigate those claims. The State Department inspector general eventually turned the documents over to congressional investigators.

According to a write-up of his interview with Shokin included in the documents, Giuliani claimed that Shokin "believes the current Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch denied his visa" and noted that Yovanovitch was "close to Mr. Biden."

Presumably why they wanted her relieved of her job.

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