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The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: What Happened Today
(about 7 hours later)
A former top aide to Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, told impeachment investigators on Wednesday that he resigned because he was upset that the Trump administration had wrestled Ukraine policy away from career diplomats, according to three people familiar with his closed-door deposition to the House Intelligence Committee.
Michael McKinley told investigators he resigned last week as a top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo out of frustration with an increasingly politicized State Department — particularly the way the Trump administration wrestled Ukraine policy away from career diplomats. He warned that efforts to pressure Ukraine “to procure negative information on political opponents” would “have a serious impact on foreign service morale and the integrity of our work overseas.”
In several hours of continuing testimony, Michael McKinley, who until last week was a senior adviser to Mr. Pompeo, described his mounting frustration with how politicized the State Department had become under President Trump, saying that the last straw for him was the ouster of Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine whom Mr. Trump ordered removed.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, outlined the next few months of impeachment at the Senate Republicans’ weekly lunch. He said House Democrats wanted to move expeditiously, possibly approving articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving. Chief Justice John Roberts would then preside over the Senate trial, which Mr. McConnell hoped would be completed by Christmas.
Mr. McKinley’s testimony was the latest in a string of accounts given by top career diplomats and administration officials to impeachment investigators about how experts were sidelined as the president pursued his own agenda on Ukraine, including in a July telephone call when Mr. Trump asked President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats.
At a private meeting in the Capitol on Tuesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked her caucus whether the House should take a formal vote to authorize the impeachment investigation. The idea was quickly shot down, according to a Democratic aide in the room. Representative Anthony Brindisi of New York said a vote was not required by the Constitution and warned it would play into Republicans’ hands. “You said it perfectly,” Ms. Pelosi told him.
While Mr. McKinley told lawmakers that he did not have detailed knowledge about the Ukraine matter, he said the handling of the issue was emblematic of a troublesome trend at the State Department, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe a closed-door deposition. Mr. McKinley said he was alarmed at how poorly diplomats were treated.
A former National Security Council aide feared Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the E.U. and one of Mr. Trump’s go-to diplomats for Ukraine, was a national security threat because of his extreme inexperience — likening him to someone driving in an unfamiliar place with no guardrails and no GPS. Tomorrow, Mr. Sondland will finally be interviewed by impeachment investigators. I asked my colleague Michael Crowley, who covers White House foreign policy, about him.
Mr. Pompeo has defended the administration’s actions regarding Ukraine, saying that the impeachment inquiry has sparked a “silly gotcha game” in Washington.
Michael, what makes Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotel owner and longtime political donor, such an odd fit as a diplomat?
A former top White House foreign policy adviser told House impeachment investigators this week that she viewed Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, as a potential national security risk because he was so unprepared for his job, according to two people familiar with her private testimony.
Many people thought Mr. Sondland was unqualified even for the job he was supposed to be doing as ambassador to the E.U. His predecessor in that job had decades of diplomatic experience and had several advanced degrees. The E.U. has 28 member states and has just a very complicated, important relationship with the U.S. that involves economics, diplomacy and security issues.
The adviser, Fiona Hill, did not accuse Mr. Sondland of acting maliciously or intentionally putting the country at risk. But she described Mr. Sondland, a hotelier and Trump donor-turned-ambassador, as metaphorically driving in an unfamiliar place with no guardrails and no GPS, according to the people, who were not authorized to publicly discuss a deposition that took place behind closed doors.
So then how did he end up as Mr. Trump’s quasi-fixer in Ukraine?
Ms. Hill, the former senior director for European and Russian affairs at the White House, also said that she raised her concerns with intelligence officials inside the White House, one of the people said.
You often see donors who at least appear to have bought their way into ambassadorships who then kind of keep their heads down, enjoy the job, revel in the title and the glamour. Mr. Sondland comes in like a mini Trump. He’s disrupting. He’s offending. Rather than many diplomats kind of buttering up their host countries, he comes in saying, “The E.U. is out of touch. It’s ripping the U.S. off. The party’s over.” He didn’t show much interest in diplomatic protocols. I spoke to one person for the story who said he is one of the Trumpiest of Trump’s ambassadors.
In her testimony, Ms. Hill described her fears that Mr. Sondland represented a counterintelligence risk because his actions made him vulnerable to foreign governments who could exploit his inexperience. She said Mr. Sondland extensively used a personal cellphone for official diplomatic business and repeatedly told foreign officials they were welcome to come to the White House whenever they liked.
Just in the past decade, he’s moved from backing Mitt Romney to supporting Jeb Bush to working for Donald Trump. Why?
Mr. Sondland’s lawyer declined to comment.
He loves the game of politics. There’s not much evidence that he tried to earn his way into foreign policy through any of that kind of hard grunt work. It looked like he was trying to catch the best train out of town, and he finally found it in Mr. Trump. And if he wanted a bigger and better job, he was going to have to make Mr. Trump happy. When it comes to Ukraine, we’re getting a clearer and clearer picture of what it meant to do that.
— Nicholas Fandos and Adam Goldman
In last night’s Democratic presidential debate, Joe Biden defended his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian energy company before quickly pivoting to Mr. Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his family. I asked my colleague Lisa Lerer, who writes our On Politics newsletter, how well that tactic worked.
Read more: Ex-Aide Saw Gordon Sondland as a Potential National Security Risk
Lisa, was there a sense by those watching the debate that Mr. Biden’s response was an effective one?
Kurt Volker, who served as Mr. Trump’s envoy to Ukraine before resigning late last month, was back at the Capitol Wednesday after testifying two weeks ago for more than eight hours.
It shifts the focus off the Biden family and onto the president, and it allows him to reiterate the argument that he’s the most electable. He can say, “Look, the president had to go seek foreign help because he was worried about my candidacy.” That is a key piece of his appeal. And his approach kind of shames any of his opponents from making an issue of this, because, if they do, they’re playing into what Mr. Trump might want.
Mr. Volker’s return on Wednesday, which had not been disclosed earlier, was for the purpose of reviewing the transcript of his earlier deposition, according to a person familiar with the situation. It is not unusual for witnesses in congressional investigations to be given an opportunity to review the official transcript of what they said.
How do you think it worked out?
Mr. Volker was not expect to provide additional testimony to lawmakers on Wednesday.
I think he caught a break on this one. So much of the debate was focused on Elizabeth Warren, and how she was handling attacks against her as a front-runner. You could have had a scenario where Mr. Biden’s response to the question about his son was the focus of the coverage and debate, and it didn’t happen. And he has his rivals, in part, to thank for that.
David Correia, who was charged last week in a campaign finance scheme along with associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, was arrested on Wednesday morning in New York, officials said. Mr. Correia, 44, surrendered to F.B.I. agents at 10:30 a.m. at Kennedy International Airport after he returned from an unidentified foreign country, officials said. He is charged with participating in a scheme to conceal the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, according to the indictment unsealed last week.
The federal investigation of Rudy Giuliani has a counterintelligence component related to his business ties, CNN reported.
— William K. Rashbaum and Michael Gold
Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine who wrote in a text message that it was “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” is expected to testify on Tuesday, according to NBC News.
While some political pundits suggest Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota won the Democratic debate on Tuesday, President Trump weighed in early Wednesday morning and declared no winners — and then he tied the presidential race to impeachment.
My colleague Annie Karni reminds us of Mr. Giuliani’s decision in 2016 to withdraw from contention for secretary of state. “I thought I could play a better role being on the outside and continuing to be his close friend and adviser,” he said at the time.
Among the 12 candidates vying to be the presidential nominee to face Mr. Trump in 2020, Mr. Trump said “You would think there is NO WAY” any could be president.
The Impeachment Briefing is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every weeknight.
The candidates on Tuesday said words “impeach” or “impeachment” 27 times in the three-hour debate. In a series of early morning Twitter posts on Wednesday, Mr. Trump denounced the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as “totally illegal and absurd” and threatened that the economy would tank if any of the Democratic candidates won the election.
“Our record Economy would CRASH, just like in 1929, if any of those clowns became President!,” he tweeted.
President Trump repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
