High-ranking Democratic and Republican lawmakers gave conflicting testimony yesterday at the first public hearing as part of the congressional investigation into the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The drama unfolded at a House Intelligence Committee hearing where two career diplomats -- William Taylor and George Kent -- expressed concern that the Republican president and those around him were pressuring Ukraine to conduct investigations that would benefit Trump politically. .
The revelation that Trump was very interested in Ukraine investigating his political rival Joe Biden drew particular attention.
Taylor said a member of his staff overheard a July 26 phone call between Trump and Gordon Sondland, a former political donor who has been appointed as a top diplomat, in which the Republican president asked about the investigations, and Sondland replied that the Ukrainians were ready to proceed. .
After the call - which came a day after Trump asked the president of Ukraine by phone to conduct those investigations - a staff member asked Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, what Trump thought about Ukraine, said Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine.
"Ambassador Sondland responded that Trump cares more about the Biden investigations, which Giuliani insists," Taylor said, referring to Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
When asked by the chairman of the committee, Democrat Adam Schiff, if this means that Trump cares more about the investigations than about Ukraine, Taylor answered in the affirmative.
Schiff began the historic session - the first impeachment drama after two decades - in the presence of numerous journalists, members of parliament and members of the public, with a potential audience of tens of millions of TV viewers, Reuters reported.
accusations that Trump abused his power were categorically denied by Republican Devin Nunes, denying the president's complicity in the saga that revolves around whether Trump and his associates improperly pressured Ukraine to smear political rivals for his own political gain.
Biden is a former vice president and the leading contender for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 election. Taylor and Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, expressed concern that the security aid freeze blackmailed Ukraine into conducting investigations.
"The questions raised by this impeachment inquiry are whether President Trump sought to exploit the vulnerability of that ally and invite the Ukrainians to interfere in our election," Schiff said at the start of the session.
"Our answer to this question will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency in general, and what kind of behavior the American people can expect from their commander in chief," Schiff said.
“If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?” Schiff added.
This week's hearings, where Americans are hearing directly for the first time from people involved in the events that sparked the congressional investigation, could pave the way for the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to approve articles of impeachment -- formal charges -- against Trump.
That would lead to a Senate trial on whether Trump would be found guilty of the charges and removed from office. The Senate is controlled by Republicans, who have expressed little support for Trump's impeachment.
When asked about the impeachment procedure, Trump said in the Oval Office, during a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, that he was "too busy to follow" and characterized it as a "witch hunt, a hoax."
Nunes accused Democrats of waging a "carefully orchestrated smear campaign" using a "horribly one-sided process" and accused "Democrats, corrupt media and biased bureaucrats" of trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election, which Trump won.
He stuck to the Republican strategy, arguing that Trump did nothing wrong when he asked the president of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
Schiff said the investigation is trying to determine whether Trump tried to condition official activities, such as a meeting at the White House or US military aid, on Ukraine's willingness to conduct two political investigations that would help his re-election campaign.
The investigation focuses on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open a corruption investigation into Biden and his son Hunter and the discredited theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election.
Hunter Biden was a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Democrats are questioning whether Trump abused his position when he withheld $391 million in security aid to Ukraine - a vulnerable ally in the face of Russian aggression - to pressure Kiev to conduct investigations that would benefit Trump politically.
Ukraine later received the money, which was approved by Congress to help Ukraine fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
Taylor, a career diplomat and former US military officer, was previously the US ambassador to Ukraine and is now the chargé d'affaires of the US embassy in Kyiv. Kent in the State Department oversees the policy towards Ukraine.
"I do not believe the US should be asking other countries to conduct selective, politically motivated investigations, or to prosecute opponents of those in power because such selective actions undermine the rule of law," Kent said.
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