Democrats table call for whistleblower to testify as hearing ends

At the end of their first public impeachment hearing, Democrats voted down an effort by Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) to force the whistleblower to testify. Instead of voting it down directly, Democrats offered to “table” the motion or delay it for now. The vote fell exactly along partisan lines — 13 to 9.

Democrats, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, say there is no longer any need to have the whistleblower testify because all of the person’s account has been verified by other witnesses. They argue there is no need to risk revealing the person’s identity, which is protected under federal law.

Republicans say the whistleblower’s motive — as well as the person’s interactions with Democrats on the committee — needs to be brought before the public.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tried out a new explanation for why President Trump held up $381 million in security aid to Ukraine: He wanted to make sure the country’s new president was a good guy.

“President Trump, who doesn’t like foreign aid … did more than Obama” for Ukraine, Jordan said.

But Trump was not sure if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected in April, was a committed reformer, Jordan said.

“When it came time to check out this new guy, President Trump said, ‘Let’s just see if he’s legit,’” Jordan said. “So for 55 days we checked him out.”

Jordan said that numerous meetings between top aides and Zelensky confirmed that he was.

“They told the president, ‘He’s a reformer. Release the money.’ And that’s exactly what President Trump did,” he added.

The latest explanation comes amid mounting evidence, including statements from White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, that the security aid was frozen because Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump himself has tested a variety of explanations, including that he wanted European allies to do more to help Ukraine’s small military fight Russian aggression.

President Trump has suggested that witnesses testifying in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry were out to get him.

“NEVER TRUMPERS!” the president tweeted Wednesday morning as the first public hearing got underway.

Under questioning by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), the first two witnesses – William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, who supervises Ukraine policy at the State Department - said they were not part of a plot to get the president and were testifying because they had been subpoenaed to appear.

“Today, the president tweeted multiple times about this hearing and he put in all caps, never Trumpers. Mr. Kent, are you a Never Trumper?” Swalwell asked.

Kent replied that he was a career Foreign Service officer “who serves whatever president is duly elected and carries out the foreign policies of the president of the United States.”

Taylor had a more succinct answer when asked the same question: “No, sir.”

Republicans sought to shift the focus of the first public impeachment hearing from President Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democrats to actions by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

For months, Republicans have suggested that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine was a legitimate area of inquiry, although no evidence suggests wrongdoing on his part.

The younger Biden served on the board of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest natural gas company, from 2014 until April this year.

The issue came up when Steve Castor, the committee’s GOP lawyer, asked the first two witnesses about Hunter Biden’s qualifications.

“Was Hunter Biden a corporate governance expert?” Castor asked George Kent, who heads the bureau of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department.

Kent replied he had “no idea” what he had studied at university or what his resume says.

But he said Biden’s work for Burisma had concerned him enough that he raised the issue with the vice president’s staff.

“There was a possibility of a perception of a conflict of interest,” Kent said.

Castor spoke after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the ranking Republican on the committee, cited a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies, and a special counsel investigation, have blamed Russia, not Ukraine, for meddling in the 2016 race.

In response to questions from Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), Kent said efforts by Trump and Biden to address corruption in Ukraine were different because Biden had led an “open, whole-of-government effort to address corruption in Ukraine.”

Himes asked if Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, were engaged in a similar effort.

“I would not say so, no,” Kent replied.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a firebrand whom Republicans added to the House Intelligence Committee in recent days in preparation for the impeachment hearings, made perhaps the most succinct case against relying on William B. Taylor as, as he called him, the Democrats’ “star witness.”

The testimony of Taylor, the top U.S. official in Ukraine, relies on hearsay, Jordan argued.

Jordan tried to undercut Taylor’s “clear understanding” that the Trump administration would not release security assistance funds to Ukraine until that country’s president committed to an investigation into the Bidens and the 2016 election.

Jordan suggested that understanding rested on a lengthy exchange between Taylor, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and several other people – not a direct line to the White House or a direct comment from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We’ve got six people have four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding,” Jordan said.

By contrast, he noted, Taylor had three meetings with Zelensky, who did not mention such an understanding: “You have three opportunities with President Zelensky for him to tell you… ‘we’re going to do these investigations to get the aid,’” Jordan said.

Jordan also said that Taylor was not on the July 25 call at the center of the case and had never spoken to President Trump or acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

Republicans seeking to undermine two diplomats’ testimony in the opening impeachment hearing pulled out the big guns: Kevin Bacon, Will Ferrell and REO Speedwagon.

They followed a bipartisan tradition of using dated cultural references in an attempt to look hip.

After Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the House Intelligence Committee chairman, gave his opening statement, a Republican Party opposition research email blasted reporters a GIF of Ferrell in the 2003 Christmas comedy “Elf,” spouting the quote, “You sit on a throne of Lies!”

At another point, the account claimed that actor “Kevin Bacon has fewer degrees of separation to the Trump Zelensky call than George Kent,” one of two diplomats who testified Wednesday.

(The GOP account also used the Bacon line in September, referring to the government whistleblower whose complaint prompted the Trump impeachment probe.)

Not to be outdone, Rep. Lee Zeldin, (R-N.Y.), who sat in the audience, tweeted his own complaint about the secondhand testimony, linking to a 1980 song by REO Speedwagon.

William B. Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, made clear in his testimony that he had two overriding concerns.

The first, he said, was “a rancorous story about whistleblowers, Mr. Giuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption, and interference in elections,” the chief focus of Democrats considering impeachment of President Trump.

But Taylor said he also was concerned about back-channel efforts to undermine U.S. policy toward Ukraine, a young democracy “on the front line in the conflict with a newly aggressive Russia.”

Taylor clearly admires those in charge of Ukraine. He spoke fondly and with admiration of Ukraine’s new leadership, which is trying to break free “from its corrupt, post-Soviet past.” He testified that Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his administration were seeking to reform the government from top to bottom.

The envoy also praised Ukrainian troops fighting Russians since 2014, when Moscow sent troops into eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Some 14,000 Ukrainians have died in the war, he said.

He said bipartisan support in Congress had provided more than $1.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2014, including ambulances, night-vision devices, communications equipment, sniper rifles, counter-battery radar, anti missiles and naval ships.

“A rag-tag army developed into a strong fighting force,” he said. “And the United States played a vital role.”

The stakes are high, Taylor said, because Ukraine is “struggling to break free of its past, hopeful that their new government will finally usher in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia, eager to join Western institutions and enjoy a more secure and prosperous life.”

White House officials and Trump allies adopted a clear line of response to the impeachment testimony from U.S. diplomats: “boring.”

“This is horribly boring... #Snoozefest,” Trump’s son Eric tweeted.

“This sham hearing is not only boring, it is a colossal waste of taxpayer time & money,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham wrote in her tweet.

There may be a strategic purpose behind that tactic: Polls show that about half of Americans agree with the idea of impeaching President Trump, and that a smaller group remains uncertain. Those uncertain voters tend to be people who don’t closely follow the news, so convincing them to tune in and pay attention to the testimony poses a challenge to Democrats. Describing the hearings as “boring” could help dissuade some of them.

William Taylor testified that he had an up-close view of the parallel tracks of foreign policy: the official State Department channels and the back-channel foreign policy pushed by Rudolph Giuliani and others.

“I encountered an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policy-making with respect to Ukraine, unaccountable to Congress, a channel that included then-Special Envoy Kurt Volker, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and, as I subsequently learned, Mr. Giuliani,” Taylor told lawmakers.

He also recounted when it became clear to him that the hold on Ukraine aid was coming from the most senior levels of the White House. During a July 18 videoconference call, he said he was told by a staffer at the Office of Management and Budget — a voice that was offscreen — that there was a hold on the aid and the person could not say why.

“All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to OMB,” Taylor said. “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 long-standing U.S. policy.”

William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, revealed new information about the potential role of President Trump in encouraging Ukraine to conduct investigations into his political rivals.

In a lengthy opening statement, Taylor said that a member of his staff overheard Trump ask Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, about “the investigations” in Ukraine on July 26.

Sondland told the president that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward, Taylor said.

The staff member, who was not identified by Taylor, then asked Sondland about the call.

“Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for,” Taylor said.

Taylor told lawmakers that he did not know of the incident when he gave a sworn deposition on Oct. 22.

The comment as relayed by Taylor is more than secondhand — a point that Republicans are likely to make to try to undermine it.

But it will probably also put even more heat on Sondland, who has changed his testimony during the course of the investigation and is due to testify publicly next Wednesday.

George Kent, who heads the bureau of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department, testified that last year he became “increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani,” the president’s personal lawyer, and two of the former New York mayor’s associates “to run a campaign to smear” the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

By this summer, Kent said, he grew “alarmed” that those efforts and “peddling false information” by some Ukrainians about the ambassador were bearing fruit. In May, Yovanovitch was removed from her post and ordered back to Washington.

“In mid-August, it became clear to me that Giuliani’s efforts to gin up politically motivated investigations were now infecting U.S. engagement with Ukraine,” Kent continued.

Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested in October after being indicted by a federal grand jury in New York City on charges they funneled illegal campaign donations to a Trump-allied political fund and Republican politicians.

Republicans demanded that the House Intelligence Committee vote on whether to subpoena the whistleblower whose report kicked off what became the impeachment inquiry.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said the committee would vote later in the hearing on whether to bring the subpoena.

But the outcome may already be certain. Schiff and other Democrats have resisted GOP efforts to have the whistleblower testify or identify him or her.

Initially, Schiff indicated he wanted the person to testify. But he has since backed off that idea, arguing that other witnesses have verified the whistleblower’s claims.

Schiff has also faced flack for saying that his committee has not spoken to the whistleblower when in fact the person did speak with a committee official. Schiff later said he should have been more clear in that he personally did not speak to the whistleblower.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, opened the impeachment hearing by laying out what Democrats would seek to prove -- that President Trump sought to extort Ukraine’s leaders to dig up dirt on a political rival -- and what was at stake.

“The questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether President Trump sought to exploit that ally’s vulnerability and invite Ukraine’s interference in our elections,” Schiff said, speaking in measured and somber tones, a stark contrast to his opening statement in a September hearing when he offered a dramatic rendition of Trump’s controversial July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president.

“Whether President Trump sought to condition official acts, such as a White House meeting or U.S. military assistance, on Ukraine’s willingness to assist with two political investigations that would help his reelection campaign,” Schiff said. “And if President Trump did either, whether such an abuse of his power is compatible with the office of the presidency?”

“The matter,” Schiff added, “is as simple and as terrible as that. Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself, and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their commander-in-chief.”

In their opening statements, the top Democrat and Republican on the House Intelligence Committee largely agreed on one point. “The facts ... are not seriously contested,” as Rep. Adam Schiff, committee chairman, put it.

But the two sides differed dramatically in what they said those facts meant.

Schiff (D-Burbank), in his statement, set out the previous testimony that the witnesses gave in closed-door depositions.

That testimony established that President Trump had turned U.S. policy toward Ukraine over to his personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, Schiff said. Giuliani used that authority to advance Trump’s “personal and political interests” by putting pressure on Ukraine to launch “political investigations” into Trump’s Democratic rivals, including the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, he said.

“The matter is as simple and as terrible as that,” he said.

The committee’s top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), in his opening statement said nothing to rebut the testimony. Instead, he sought to brush it aside by focusing on what he said were Democrats’ improper motives.

Democrats staged a “one-sided process” in which witnesses were “put through a closed-door audition” that was “cult-like,” he said.

What was really at stake, he said, was the president’s ability to control the executive branch.

“Elements of the civil service have decided that they, not the president, are in charge,” he said. Because they disagreed with Trump’s skepticism about U.S. aid to foreign countries, they’ve tried to undermine him, even though, in the end, Trump “approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine.”

The day’s proceedings, he concluded, are “nothing more than an impeachment process in search of a crime.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes speaking on Capitol Hill.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, kicked off the GOP defense of the president at the hearing by trying to undermine the Democrats’ process by describing it as unfair.

Nunes dubbed the inquiry an “impeachment sham” and a “low-rent Ukrainian sequel” to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Republicans argue that there are three pivotal questions that Democrats refuse to investigate: how extensively Democrats spoke to the whistleblower before that person filed the complaint which kicked off the Ukraine scandal; why Ukrainian energy company Burisma hired Hunter Biden and what he did; and the “full extent” of Ukraine’s election meddling against the Trump campaign.

There is no evidence the Ukrainians interfered in the Trump campaign.

The State Department has agreed to pick up the legal fees for several diplomats and other department officials who are testifying in the impeachment inquiry, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.

Until now, the officials testifying have had to pay out of pocket for their lawyers and travel costs. Their union, the American Foreign Service Assn., has been collecting donations to help pay the bills.

David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, No. 3 in the department, has told associates of the decision to pick up the costs, according to one former senior diplomat who was among those given the news. The former official asked not to be identified to discuss private conversations.

The State Department did not dispute the account but declined to comment further.

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, asked by reporters in Germany last week if anything would be done to mitigate the officials’ cost, said he would have an announcement “shortly” that would “make good sense and be consistent with what we’ve done previously.” He referred to the costs as “legal burdens connected to all of this noise.”

There is little precedent, however, for the current proceedings. Many of the officials are testifying against the administration’s orders not to cooperate.

Pompeo has come under criticism for a lack of public support for some of the witnesses, whom Trump has disparaged as “un-elected radicals” and “never Trumpers.”

The cavernous hearing room in the House of Representatives’ Longworth office building is ready for battle as we prepare for the first impeachment hearing of Donald Trump’s presidency.

A pair of screens were playing Mick Mulvaney in a loop — suggesting that Democrats plan to replay the acting chief of staff’s notorious news conference in which he conceded Trump held up aid to Ukraine in hopes of forcing the country to investigate Democrats.

Republicans have their own props ready to go, including signs behind lawmakers that they feel will undermine the probe. One of them shows a 2017 tweet from the whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Zaid, declaring the word “coup.” Another says it’s been “93 days since Adam Schiff learned the identity of the whistleblower.”

Press photographers, meanwhile, are hovering around the witness table, taking positions so they can shoot the first pictures of Ambassador William Taylor and State Department official George Kent, the day’s two witnesses.

Outside, a long line snakes through the hallway, filled with people hoping to get seats in a few dozen brown leather chairs allotted to the public.

The first three rows of the public seats are reserved for members of Congress who are not on the Intelligence Committee. They are allowed to attend the hearing as observers. Twenty minutes before the hearing’s scheduled start time of 10 a.m., a few lawmakers were using them, including Rep. Louie Gohmert, an outspoken Texas Republican who was helping a few reporters fill their notebooks with quotes defending the president.

Bill Taylor, at left, and George Kent.

(Associated Press)

George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, dealt with U.S. policy to Ukraine. William B. Taylor Jr., a veteran diplomat, was brought back from retirement several months ago to become acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Both have served under Democratic and Republican administrations.

They have separately told lawmakers they were troubled by the pressure President Trump and his minions put on Ukraine’s newly elected government to launch investigations that would benefit Trump politically while holding up $391 million in congressionally approved security aid to the struggling democracy.

They also recounted the shadow foreign policy that the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, conducted in Ukraine, including fomenting the recall of a U.S. ambassador.

Giuliani, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, Gordon Sondland, a Trump mega-donor who was named U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt Volker, who resigned in September as special representative to Ukraine, operated “an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policymaking with respect to Ukraine,” Taylor told House investigators last month, warning of the “damage” they had done.

Sondland and Volker are scheduled to testify next week. Perry has announced plans to resign.

Kent told lawmakers that Trump wanted Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to publicly announce he would investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as a debunked conspiracy theory involving the 2016 election.

“POTUS wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton,” Kent said, according to a transcript of his closed-door deposition, using an abbreviation for the president.

Kent said he reached that conclusion based on secondhand information, however, and he acknowledged that he didn’t know what the president was offering in return – points that Republicans are expected to hammer in the hearing.

Kent also spoke extensively about Giuliani’s smear campaign against the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, leading to her abrupt recall in May.

“His assertions and allegations against former Ambassador Yovanovitch were without basis — untrue, period,” Kent said.

The first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry will start at 10 a.m. with opening statements from Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the ranking member.

The witnesses — William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs — will then be sworn in and given a chance to offer opening statements. The two, who previously gave closed-door depositions. will sit together at the witness table.

From there, questions will get underway. Schiff and Nunes — or their assigned staff members — will get 45 minutes each to ask questions.

This is different from a normal congressional hearing, in which members only get five minutes. The rule was designed to allow straightforward, uninterrupted questioning of witnesses during the impeachment inquiry.

Other members of the committee, rotating between Republicans and Democrats, will get 5 minutes for their questions. Expect at least two rounds of questions from committee members.

In addition to the lawmakers on the panel, staff attorneys for each side will be allowed to ask questions.

For Democrats, the chief lawyer is Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who put away mobsters in New York before joining the House committee. For Republicans, it is Steve Castor, a long-time GOP attorney working on House investigations.

Mike Pompeo testifies on Capitol Hill at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Jan. 12, 2017.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

Senate Democrats are warning the State Department against punishing career diplomats and other State officials who will testify to a House panel looking into whether President Trump should be impeached for his actions in Ukraine.

In a letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, 10 Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged him “to emphatically and unequivocally support and protect these employees to your fullest abilities.” The senators said they did not address the letter to Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo because “his silence to date speaks volumes.”

Pompeo has been widely criticized by current and former foreign service officers for failing to defend the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, who was abruptly recalled to Washington in May, as well as diplomats who drew Trump’s ire for appearing in closed-door sessions. Yovanovich is scheduled to testify Friday in a public hearing.

Some of the most potentially damaging testimony to the president in the closed-door hearings came from veteran diplomats, including the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., who will testify Wednesday in the first public hearing.