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Impeachment Investigators Question George Kent, State Dept. Ukraine Expert Senior State Dept. Ukraine Expert Says White House Sidelined Him
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — George P. Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy, on Tuesday became the latest high-ranking witness to be questioned behind closed doors by House impeachment investigators, facing questions about his knowledge of the widening Ukraine scandal. WASHINGTON — A senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy told impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he was all but cut out of decisions regarding the country after a May meeting organized by Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, describing his sidelining by President Trump’s inner circle as “wrong,” according to a lawmaker who heard the testimony.
As Democratic leaders privately debated whether to hold a vote in the coming days to officially open an impeachment inquiry they began three weeks ago, Mr. Kent sat with investigators despite being directed by the State Department not to do so, filling in crucial blanks in their account. The revelation from George P. Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, emerged as he became the latest top administration official to submit to hours of closed-door testimony to the House committees investigating how President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
Mr. Kent raised concerns to colleagues early this year about the pressure being directed at Ukraine by Mr. Trump and his private lawyer,Rudolph W. Giuliani to pursue investigations into Mr. Trump’s political rivals, according to people familiar with Mr. Kent’s warnings. Despite an edict by the White House not to cooperate with what it has called an illegitimate inquiry, Mr. Kent was one of a procession of top officials who have made the trip to the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill to sit for hours with impeachment investigators, unspooling a remarkably consistent tale. They have detailed how Mr. Trump sought to manipulate American policy in Ukraine to meet his goals, circumventing career diplomats and policy experts and inserting his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani into the process, raising alarms in the West Wing and throughout the government.
As far back as March, they said, Mr. Kent pointed to Mr. Giuliani’s role in what he called a “disinformation” campaign intended to use a Ukrainian prosecutor to smear Mr. Trump’s adversaries. Those included former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Marie L. Yovanovitch, then the United States ambassador to Ukraine, and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information during the 2016 campaign about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. “Here is a senior State Department official responsible for six countries, one of which is Ukraine, who found himself outside of a parallel process that he felt was undermining 28 years of U.S. policy and promoting the rule of law in Ukraine,” Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, said of Mr. Kent, after emerging from the room where he was being deposed.
It is that campaign that is at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, which is based on the account of an intelligence official who filed a whistle-blower complaint that alleged that Mr. Trump abused his power to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election. “And that was wrong,” Mr. Connolly said. “He used that word, ‘wrong.’”
Mr. Kent, wearing a three-piece suit and bow tie, entered the obscured chambers of the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday morning to kick off another jam-packed day for investigators. After the May 23 meeting called by Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Kent told investigators, he and others whose portfolios included Ukraine were edged out by Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, Kurt D. Volker, the special envoy for Ukraine, and Rick Perry, the energy secretary, who “declared themselves the three people now responsible for Ukraine policy,” Mr. Connolly said.
With lawmakers returning to the Capitol after a two-week recess, Democratic leaders planned to huddle with their caucus Tuesday evening to update them on their work and to discuss the possibility of holding a floor vote to authorize their inquiry. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far insisted the move was unnecessary, but Republicans and the White House have said it is a prerequisite to lend fairness and legitimacy to the process. Democratic leaders were privately gauging support among swing-district Democrats for a possible vote, according to three officials familiar with the outreach. Mr. Kent said he was told at another point to “lay low” on Ukraine matters.
Separately, the committees leading the investigation had set a series of crucial deadlines on Tuesday for key witnesses and executive branch agencies to hand over relevant documents. The accounts are trickling out even as the White House seeks to block even more information from surfacing in the impeachment inquiry. Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday defied a request by the investigators for documents related to the inquiry, and the Defense Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and Mr. Giuliani all gave notice that they would defy subpoenas to turn over material. All of them cited the lack of a House vote authorizing the impeachment inquiry as grounds for stonewalling.
Mr. Kent’s appearance came after an emerging pattern in which administration witnesses are instructed not to comply with the impeachment inquiry in line with a White House declaration last week that there would be a “full halt” to any cooperation, but ultimately agree to do so. According to officials familiar with the investigation, the State Department directed Mr. Kent not to appear and sought to limit his testimony. The House Intelligence Committee then issued a last-minute subpoena ordering him to appear, and he complied. In a sternly worded response to an unusual request for documents, Matthew E. Morgan, the counsel to the vice president, accused the committees of requesting material that is “clearly not vice-presidential records” and blasted the investigation enterprise as a “self-proclaimed ‘impeachment inquiry’” that was ultimately illegitimate.
He was the second top State Department official to do so in recent days. The first was Ms. Yovanovitch, whom Mr. Trump ordered removed from her ambassadorial post in May, but who is still a State Department employee. She answered questions from investigators on Friday, offering a blistering assessment of the Trump administration’s foreign policy and saying she had been told Mr. Trump himself pressed for her ouster for months based on “false claims” by outsiders working for their own personal and political objectives. But House Democratic leaders, who spent much of Tuesday privately polling their rank-and-file members about whether to hold such a vote — a move that could carry political risks and which they have resisted — said they were not planning one.
Fiona Hill, a former top White House adviser on Russia and Europe, appeared on Monday under subpoena as well, and other current and former officials are expected to follow suit. Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to Europe who appears to be at the center of the pressure campaign, will meet investigators on Thursday. “There is no requirement that we have a vote,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “We’re not here to call bluffs, we’re here to find the truth.”
Mr. Kent’s warnings about the disinformation effort are reflected in internal State Department emails provided by the agency’s inspector general to Congress this month and obtained by The New York Times. In one, he assailed a “fake news smear” being pushed against Ms. Yovanovitch by conservative media personalities allied with Mr. Trump. In another, he criticized the Ukrainian prosecutor who was pushing the claims about Ms. Yovanovitch and called them “complete poppycock.” Mr. Kent spent more than seven hours sequestered with investigators, discussing concerns he long ago raised with State Department colleagues about the pressure being directed at Ukraine by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani to open investigations into the president’s political rivals.
A career diplomat, Mr. Kent has served since last fall as the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. He has deep experience in Kiev, and with Ukrainian corruption specifically, having served as an anti-corruption coordinator in the State Department’s European Bureau in 2014 and 2015, and then as deputy chief of mission in the United States embassy in Kiev from 2015 until 2018. Witness interviews and public records have now confirmed key elements of an anonymous C.I.A. whistle-blower complaint that accused Mr. Trump of abusing his power to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election, though critical questions remain unanswered.
At the White House, Mr. Trump, picking up a talking point from his Republican allies in Congress, accused Democrats of “allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings,” and said if Republicans tried to do the same thing “they would be excoriated by the Fake News.” “Every witness we have heard thus far has corroborated the basic narrative,” Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey and a former State Department official involved in the House investigation. “At first gradually and then completely, official policy was replaced by a shadow policy run by Giuliani that had as its objective not our national interest but the president’s political interest.”
“Let the facts come out from the charade of people, most of whom I do not know, they are interviewing for 9 hours each, not selective leaks,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. Republicans, who have pounded Democrats for not holding the vote, kept up the pressure on Tuesday, accusing them of ignoring obvious precedent set in the two modern presidential impeachment investigations to deny Mr. Trump and his party a fair process.
Impeachment investigators thus far have been conducting their proceedings almost entirely in secret by holding staff-led witness depositions, or interviews, rather than public hearings. Republicans have seized on that approach as evidence that Democrats are trying to impeach the president out of public view. Across the Capitol, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said Democrats had thrown “fairness and precedent to the wind.” And at the White House, Mr. Trump picked up a similar line of argument, accusing Democrats of “allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings.”
But the tactic is not uncommon on Capitol Hill, at least in the early stages of an investigation. Senior House Democrats argue that conducting the interviews in private is a more efficient and effective form of fact-finding that avoids some of the spectacle of a public hearing and ensures that potential witnesses are not able to easily adjust their stories in ways that could mislead investigators. House aides during Watergate did something similar before holding public hearings related to whether to impeach Richard M. Nixon. Democrats say they, too, plan to publicly present their findings when they have sorted out what happened. Democrats defended their investigation, and said it was bearing fruit.
Democrats’ reconsideration of bypassing a floor vote to authorize the inquiry appeared, at least in part, intended to undercut another Republican criticism. Although there is no requirement in the Constitution or the House rules that such a vote take place to make an impeachment inquiry official, the president’s allies have continuously accused Democrats of deviating from the precedent set in modern presidential impeachments and denying Mr. Trump and Republicans a say in the process. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the inquiry was being conducted behind closed doors to preserve its independence, and insisted that Republicans on the committee have been given an equal opportunity to ask questions.
Holding a vote could also help Democrats in continuing court fights over access to investigative materials they seek. But it presents some political risk for them, as well. Democratic leaders’ outreach to politically vulnerable members suggests they are concerned about how such a vote would affect them. Mr. Schiff said that the committees had made “dramatic progress” in understanding the July phone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that prompted the whistle-blower complaint. And the witnesses, Mr. Schiff said, had made clear that there was a paper record that had not been provided to Congress, despite numerous subpoenas.
Investigators were waiting to see if the Trump administration and key witnesses in the case would produce documents related to Mr. Trump’s conversations with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the decision to withhold $391 million in security aid for Ukraine this summer, and other matters. Those already under subpoena to produce the material include the Office of Management and Budget, the Defense Department and Mr. Giuliani. Vice President Mike Pence also faces a deadline to hand over a vast set of records voluntarily, or face a subpoena. “The case of obstruction of Congress continues to build,” he said.
The deadlines force each department or witness to decide between the demands of Congress and the White House’s direction not to cooperate with the House’s work. Seeking to tip the scales in favor of cooperation, Democrats have warned that not doing so will be considered obstruction of their impeachment inquiry, behavior worthy of its own impeachment article against Mr. Trump.
New requests for depositions continued to stack up. The committees wrote on Friday to two top officials at the White House budget office, requesting they appear next week to discuss the suspension of the security aid, according to one of the officials. They targeted Russ Vought, the office’s acting director, and Michael Duffey, a senior Trump appointee there who was said to have helped approve orders freezing the funds. The letters to the men said merely that investigators believed they had “information relevant to these matters.”New requests for depositions continued to stack up. The committees wrote on Friday to two top officials at the White House budget office, requesting they appear next week to discuss the suspension of the security aid, according to one of the officials. They targeted Russ Vought, the office’s acting director, and Michael Duffey, a senior Trump appointee there who was said to have helped approve orders freezing the funds. The letters to the men said merely that investigators believed they had “information relevant to these matters.”
Mr. Kent was believed to have special insight into Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine, but he was also deeply involved in previous efforts to persuade the country to investigate corruption. In his earlier roles, Mr. Kent had aggressively pushed Ukrainian prosecutors to pursue investigations into Mykola Zlochevsky, an oligarch who owned a gas company that started paying Hunter Biden, the presidential candidate’s son, as a board member in 2014. The picture that has emerged from the private testimony that has been offered so far has been striking. First, Marie L. Yovanovitch, whom Mr. Trump abruptly removed this spring as United States ambassador to Ukraine, on Friday offered a blistering assessment of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. The president’s allies had shoved aside career diplomats, including her, in service of “false claims” by outsiders working for their own personal and political objectives, she charged.
When a British case against Mr. Zlochevsky for money laundering was dismissed in January 2015 for lack of evidence, Mr. Kent and others in the State Department blamed Ukrainian prosecutors. The Ukrainian prosecutors had refused to provide evidence to British prosecutors, Mr. Kent told associates, because they and other officials were being paid off by Mr. Zlochevsky or his allies. Then on Monday, Fiona Hill, a former top White House adviser for Europe and Russia said that both she and John R. Bolton, the president’s then national security adviser, objected strenuously to what they viewed as the hijacking of relations with Ukraine by unofficial channels. In her testimony, Ms. Hill quoted Mr. Bolton as warning he would not be part of any “drug deal” between other Trump appointees and Ukraine, and calling Mr. Giuliani a “hand grenade.”
The extent of Mr. Kent’s testimony was not immediately clear, but as far back as March, people familiar with his warnings said, Mr. Kent pointed to Mr. Giuliani’s role in what he called a “disinformation” campaign intended to use a Ukrainian prosecutor to smear Mr. Trump’s adversaries. Those included former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Ms. Yovanovitch, and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information during the 2016 campaign about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
In his voluntary appearance, Mr. Volker played down the idea that he and other presidential appointees had taken part in anything inappropriate, but he turned over a tranche of text messages with Ukrainian and American officials that showed at least some members of the diplomatic core were deeply alarmed by what they believed was happening.
Mr. Sondland, the Trump campaign donor turned ambassador who appears to be at the center of the pressure campaign, will meet investigators on Thursday.
Mr. Kent’s appearance fit an emerging pattern in which administration witnesses are instructed not to comply with the impeachment inquiry in line with a White House declaration last week that there would be a “full halt” to any cooperation, but who ultimately agree to do so. According to officials familiar with the investigation, the State Department directed Mr. Kent not to appear and sought to limit his testimony. The House Intelligence Committee then issued a last-minute subpoena ordering him to appear, and he complied.
The process was the same for Ms. Yovanovitch and Ms. Hill.
Mr. Kent’s warnings about the disinformation effort are reflected in internal State Department emails provided by the agency’s inspector general to Congress this month and obtained by The New York Times. In one, he assailed a “fake news smear” being pushed against Ms. Yovanovitch by conservative news media personalities allied with Mr. Trump. In another, he criticized the Ukrainian prosecutor who was pushing the claims about Ms. Yovanovitch and called them “complete poppycock.”
A career diplomat, Mr. Kent has served since last fall as the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. He has deep experience in Kiev, and with Ukrainian corruption specifically, having served as an anti-corruption coordinator in the State Department’s European Bureau in 2014 and 2015, and then as deputy chief of mission in the United States Eembassy in Kiev from 2015 until 2018.
In his earlier roles, Mr. Kent had aggressively pushed Ukrainian prosecutors to pursue investigations into Mykola Zlochevsky, an oligarch who owned a gas company that started paying Hunter Biden, the presidential candidate’s younger son, as a board member in 2014.
When a British case against Mr. Zlochevsky for money laundering was dismissed in January 2015 for lack of evidence, Mr. Kent and others in the State Department blamed Ukrainian prosecutors.
Tensions boiled over at a previously unreported meeting in early February 2015 in Kiev, in which Mr. Kent scolded a deputy prosecutor in the office of Vitaly Yarema, who was the general prosecutor of Ukraine — the nation’s top law enforcement post, similar to that of the attorney general of the United States.Tensions boiled over at a previously unreported meeting in early February 2015 in Kiev, in which Mr. Kent scolded a deputy prosecutor in the office of Vitaly Yarema, who was the general prosecutor of Ukraine — the nation’s top law enforcement post, similar to that of the attorney general of the United States.
According to a Ukrainian and an American with knowledge of the meeting, Mr. Kent demanded of the deputy prosecutor, “Who took the bribe and how much was it?”
The Ukrainian deputy replied — perhaps jokingly — that a $7 million bribe had been paid just before Mr. Yarema’s taking the office.
The F.B.I. looked into the bribe allegation, according to people familiar with it, but — as is common in the world of Ukrainian corruption investigations — the inquiry stalled amid a tangled web of contradictory and evolving stories.
In the days after the heated meeting with Mr. Kent, Mr. Yarema was fired and eventually replaced by another prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, whom American officials came to view as similarly problematic.In the days after the heated meeting with Mr. Kent, Mr. Yarema was fired and eventually replaced by another prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, whom American officials came to view as similarly problematic.
The elder Mr. Biden in 2016 successfully pushed for Mr. Shokin’s ouster because the Obama administration and other Western governments and international institutions contended he was turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the country’s elite, including Mr. Zlochevsky. In 2016, the elder Mr. Biden successfully pushed for Mr. Shokin’s ouster because the Obama administration and other Western governments and international institutions contended he was turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the country’s elite, including Mr. Zlochevsky.
It was Mr. Biden’s role in the dismissal of Mr. Shokin that has subsequently been held up by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani as evidence that the former vice president intervened in Ukrainian affairs to help his son. There is no evidence of that. It was Mr. Biden’s role in the dismissal of Mr. Shokin that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have subsequently held up as evidence that the former vice president intervened in Ukrainian affairs to help his son. There is no evidence of that.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting. Emily Cochrane and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.