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US Envoy: Ukraine Aid Would Not Be Released Without Investigations to Help Trump

By Ken Bredemeier November 5, 2019

A key U.S. diplomat told impeachment investigators targeting President Donald Trump that he came to believe that nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine would not be released unless Kyiv publicly stated it would launch investigations to help Trump politically.

In revised testimony released Tuesday, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told the impeachment investigators in the House of Representatives that he warned an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at a Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw "that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks."

Sondland, a major donor to Trump's 2017 inauguration celebration, was referring to Trump's demand in a late July call with Zelenskiy that Ukraine investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic presidential rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden's work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and any evidence that Ukraine meddled in Trump's 2016 election that sent him to the White House.

Trump has for weeks denied there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine – military assistance in exchange for political investigations – but Sondland's testimony about his conversation with Zelenskiy aide Andriy Yermak in the Polish capital was sharply at odds with Trump's contention. Nonetheless, after withholding the military assistance for weeks,Trump released it, which Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.

Impeachment inquiry

Trump's demands of Ukraine are at the center of the House impeachment inquiry into whether he violated U.S. national security to help himself politically. Lawmakers already have heard weeks of closed-door testimony about Trump's relations with the eastern European country in advance of public hearings that could start later this month.

The Democratic-controlled House could in the coming weeks cast a simple-majority vote to impeach Trump, a Republican, leading to a trial in the Republican-majority Senate. His conviction in the Senate by a two-thirds vote would oust him from office, but his removal remains unlikely since the votes of at least 20 Republicans would be needed for a conviction.

A transcript of Sondland's closed-door testimony was released along with that of another key U.S. diplomat, Kurt Volker, a former U.S. envoy to Kyiv.

In testimony already revealed at the time he appeared before the impeachment investigators, Sondland said that Trump had delegated U.S. foreign policy oversight on Ukraine to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is Trump's personal attorney, an edict with which he disagreed but nonetheless complied.

Sondland said officials were "disappointed by the president's direction that we involve Mr. Giuliani. Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the president's personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine."

Volker also depicted Giuliani as the major force to get Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens.

Volker said he was "never asked to do anything" he thought was wrong, including by Trump, but said he feared the U.S. relationship with Ukraine was "getting sucked into a domestic political debate."

In releasing the Sondland and Volker transcripts, the leaders of the impeachment committees said that as early as last May, Trump directed U.S. diplomats to work with Giuliani on Ukraine policy and get Zelenskiy to publicly state that the Bidens were being investigated.

"It is clear from their testimony that, in exchange for the statement, President Trump would award the Ukrainian president with a highly coveted White House meeting and, later, with millions of dollars in critical military aid being withheld," the impeachment leaders said.

Congressmen Adam Schiff and Eliot Engel and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, the impeachment leaders, said that "in an effort to prevent further incriminating information from coming to light, the State Department is continuing to obstruct our investigation by refusing to provide subpoenaed records, including additional text messages provided to the department by Ambassador Sondland. This blanket stonewalling will only continue to build the case against the president for obstruction of Congress, especially in light of the damning evidentiary record the committees have already gathered."

Other testimony

The Sondland and Volker accounts came a day after the release of testimony from two other diplomats, Marie Yovanovitch, a former ambassador to Ukraine, and Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Both Yovanovitch and McKinley told investigators they did not feel supported by the State Department in their dealings with Ukraine or in their relations with Trump and his aides.

Yovanovitch said she felt threatened by Trump when he described her as "bad news" in the phone call with Zelenskiy. Trump officials recalled her to Washington months before her tour in Kyiv was due to end and dismissed her.