10/22/19: If Trump was already having a bad month, Tuesday was his worst day yet. (Or, the best day for this country in almost three years.)
On Tuesday, another U.S. diplomat marched up to Capitol Hill to testify behind closed doors. What leaked, and what he said in his 15-page opening statement, which was available to the press, must have made the president poop his pajamas. That veteran diplomat, Bill Taylor, was chosen by Mike Pompeo to replace the previous U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump went out of his way to dump.
Call it karma.
If you heard the witnesses this week, you would BE concerned.
____________________
“If Bill Taylor says it happened, it happened.”
Steven Pifer
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If you aren’t following testimony in the impeachment inquiry, let’s just say that what’s leaking isn’t making Trump sound like a saint. The president’s staunchest defenders are outraged. Why are witnesses testifying behind closed doors! How dare Democrats leak damaging details! Why hasn’t Speaker Pelosi called for an official impeachment vote! Trump himself has called the inquiry a “kangaroo court.” He’s not going to cooperate. Lawmakers can’t make him.
This created a national security threat.
Still, the witnesses keep parading before Congress, and not one has defended the president so far.
Here’s the capsule version. Yovanovitch indicated that she ran afoul of Rudy Giuliani, who wanted her canned. Rudy wanted her booted, she says, because she opposed his efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens. She also warned Rudy that the guys he was working with in Ukraine might be crooks.
George Kent testified that he had concerns about what Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine. But he was more concerned by what he saw as a White House effort to sideline regular diplomats and create an alternative channel of communication to Ukrainian leaders. And he couldn’t figure out what Rudy was up to – or why the Trump administration was delaying military aid.
Kurt Volker resigned as soon as his name turned up in the first whistleblower’s complaint. The whistleblower reported that Volker and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke with Giuliani “in an attempt to ‘contain the damage’” he was doing to U.S. national security.
Volker, whose motives seem legit, told lawmakers that Giuliani and his pals were running a “shadow shakedown” in the Ukraine.
Dr. Fiona Hill testified that her boss, John Bolton, referred to
Rudy as “a hand grenade” who was going to blow everyone to bits. She considered
what was going on, the interference with military aid, and the demand for Ukraine
to investigate the Bidens, to represent a counterintelligence risk to
the United States.
Ambassador Sondland seemed to tap dance around responsibility for any of the mess. He did defend Yovanovitch. He said that he and Volker agreed that President Trump should take a meeting with the President of Ukraine without precondition. Only later did he realize that Rudy Giuliani’s “agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign [emphasis added].”
Trump took another right hook to the jaw when Michael McKinney, a top adviser to Secretary of State Pompeo, resigned and appeared voluntarily before the House Intelligence Committee. His opening statement makes his position clear:
The timing of my resignation was the result of
two overriding concerns: the failure, in my view, of the State Department to
offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the Impeachment Inquiry
on Ukraine; and, second, by what appears to be the utilization of our
ambassadors overseas to advance domestic political objectives [emphasis
added].
I was disturbed by the
implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative
information on [the president’s] political opponents. I was convinced that this
would also have a serious impact on foreign service morale and the integrity of
our work overseas.
In other words, Sondland
and McKinney thought there was a quid pro quo. Dr. Hill thought so, too. This
created a national security threat. Kurt Volker thought Rudy’s efforts, and the
hold put on military aid, were a security threat. George Kent worried about
Hunter Biden’s work but wanted to make it clear he thought it was fishy that
regular diplomats were being pushed aside. Ms. Yovanovitch wasn’t sure what had
happened to her, or why, and left Ukraine before the diplomatic doo hit the
fan. She believed the people Giuliani was working with were kind of sleazy.
*
BY THE TIME Ambassador Bill Taylor arrived to testify, Team Trump appeared to be on the ropes.
From what we know – and Republicans remain outraged because witnesses are appearing behind closed doors – and maybe not so much because of what they are saying while they’re there – Taylor may have knocked the president down for a nine-count. In fact, there would seem to be an excellent chance, that when Chairman Schiff finally decides he has enough evidence to open hearings to the public, the friends of President Trump will be sorry they asked.
We know Taylor had a distinguished career as diplomat. He left public service some years back. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo convinced him to return last spring and take the job as charge d’affaires to Ukraine. Taylor is a West Point graduate and served during the Vietnam War.
He was a company commander in the 101st Airborne Division and was awarded a Bronze Star.
In 2006, President George W. Bush chose him to be Ambassador to Ukraine, and he served for three years, until President Obama replaced him with an ambassador of his own. At age 72, when Pompeo asked, Taylor was reluctant to return. A Republican mentor helped change his mind.
“If your country asks you to
do something, you do it—if you can be effective,” Taylor testified his mentor
said.
As for character, Taylor would be a hard man for Trump fans to attack. (But, as we shall see, they do.) A veteran diplomat from the Bush administration described him as “a person of integrity with a strong, ethical base.” A former ambassador to the Soviet Union agreed. “You couldn’t ask for a more credible, universally respected, upright public servant to testify on the facts of this case.” Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was even more confidant in what Taylor might say. “If Bill Taylor says it happened, it happened,” he told reporters.
So, what did Taylor tell lawmakers on Wednesday? First, we learn that he’s a meticulous notetaker. He said he shared his notes with the State Department, which refused to turn them over to congressional panels involved in the inquiry. Taylor kept a copy for himself.
It didn’t take long for Ambassador Taylor
to start ringing alarm bells. In the first three paragraphs of his opening
statement he explained who he was. He was a Vietnam veteran, a career diplomat
with fifty years of experience, a man who had served every U.S. president since
1985.
In his fourth paragraph he rang the first bell.
While I have served in many
places and in different capacities, I have a particular interest in and respect
for the importance of our country’s relationship with Ukraine. Our national
security demands that this relationship remain strong, However, in August and
September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship
with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular, informal
channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security
assistance for domestic political reasons [emphasis added].
That would be another vote for: “Yes, there was a quid pro quo.”
“Whole, free, democratic, and at peace.”
Nor did Taylor feel that the U.S. could afford to ruin its relationship with Ukraine. In his fifth paragraph, he explained:
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.”
If Ukraine could break free of Russian influence, he continued, it would be “possible for Europe to be whole, free, democratic, and at peace.” An American president could stand by Ukraine and shape a better world.
Taylor arrived in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, on June 17, 2019. He was carrying a letter from Mr. Trump, inviting Mr. Zelensky to meet in the White House. What Taylor discovered on arrival was “a weird combination of encouraging, confusing, and ultimately alarming circumstances.” He was encouraged by Zelensky’s desire to root out corruption. He was confused to find there were two diplomatic tracks at work, one “highly irregular,” on which Rudy Giuliani ran the train.
At first, Taylor said, all the American principals agreed a meeting between Trump and Zelensky would benefit both nations. As other witnesses had made clear, he too said he soon realized Rudy was tearing up the regular diplomatic rails. If Zelensky hoped to meet with Trump, he was going to have to push “the investigation of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.” By July 10, Taylor was hearing from top Ukrainian officials who said Giuliani had told them a phone call between the two leaders was not going to happen.
Unless.
They told Taylor they were “disappointed and alarmed.” Eight days later, he heard another U.S. official say that “there was a hold on security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why.”
The picture emerging was damning to President Trump and Lawyer Rudy, in the extreme. So, Republicans fell back on arguing that what Taylor was saying was “thirdhand hearsay.”
And some of it was.
And most of it wasn’t.
“Contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy.”
Taylor’s opening statement continued. During one “otherwise normal meeting,” he and other diplomats listened to a “voice” on a conference call. Who was speaking, he did not know:
…the person was off-screen – said that she was
from OMB [Office of Management and Budget] 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 [Mick Mulvaney] 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.
A series of high-level discussions followed. According to Taylor, “the unanimous conclusion” was that military aid should be resumed. There should be no conditions attached. The Department of Defense was in favor.
(Taylor had
been keeping painstaking notes.)
Subsequently, other U.S. diplomats and
government officials told Taylor that the hold on military aid and the hold on
any meeting between the two presidents had to do with White House insistence on
certain “investigations.” In one meeting, Taylor was told, National Security
Advisor Bolton (Taylor mistakenly called him “Ambassador Bolton” in his opening
remarks), became so upset over the hold, that he terminated discussion. Bolton
told Hill, who told Taylor, that he wanted no part of the “drug deal” White
House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Giuliani were cooking up. “Bolton” now opposed a call between the two leaders “out
of concern that it ‘would be a disaster.’”
In a conversation with Mr. Sondland on July 20, Sondland told Taylor he had recommended a phrase for Zelensky to use if he did talk to Trump. “I will leave no stone unturned,” he was to say, in pursuing the investigations Trump so much wanted.
It was all about Biden, father, and son.
Taylor was not in on the critical call between the presidents on July 25. Everything he says he had heard previous witnesses had verified.
Shortly thereafter, Volker and Taylor traveled to the front lines, where sporadic fighting still flares almost every day. Looking across a damaged bridge, where a river separated the two sides, Taylor could see heavily-armed Russian forces. He thought of the 13,000 Ukrainian dead. “More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance,” he realized at that moment.
That was how he explained it to lawmakers.
By late August, his concern had intensified. Military assistance had been on hold for weeks. On August 27, Bolton flew to Kyiv to talk to Zelensky. Taylor spoke to Bolton about his worries. Bolton recommended sending a first-person cable to Secretary of State Pompeo. Taylor did.
A top Ukrainian official asked him about the aid delay on August 29.
“At that point,” Taylor testified, “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,” he told the House Intelligence Committee. On September 1, he was told that Sondland had warned the Ukrainians that “the security assistance money would not come until President Zelenskyy committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.”
So, was there a quid pro quo?
Everything, including security assistance, was dependent.
We knew from earlier testimony, that Sondland had assured Taylor in an email that Trump said there were no quid pro quos. But Taylor told lawmakers, Sondland went on to admit that there were. President Zelensky would have to announce he was investigating Joe Biden and his son or forget any military assistance. “Ambassador Sondland said that ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor explained.
“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.” Other diplomats made it clear that Trump was adamant. The president claimed he wasn’t asking for a quid pro quo. But, as Taylor described it, he was insisting “that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.” On September 8 Sondland told Taylor, that the U.S. and Ukraine were in a “stalemate.” Zelensky would have to “clear things up” in public.
“I understood a ‘stalemate’ to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance,” Taylor told the committee, until the Ukrainians committed to what amounted to interference in the next U.S. election.
And that’s all we knew, by Tuesday afternoon.
*
TAYLOR MIGHT BE a decorated war hero and a man of unflinching integrity and courage, according to peers. Yet, by Tuesday evening, White House Press Lacky Stephanie Grisham, was out with a statement. In it, she bashed Taylor and the other witnesses, including those who Trump had chosen to fill their posts. Grisham insisted that the president had “done nothing wrong.”
The witnesses were part of “a coordinated
smear campaign from far-left lawmakers
and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.”
