The Daily - A ‘Crazy’ Plan: How U.S. Diplomats Discussed the Pressure on Ukraine

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

The House Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry of President Trump called their first witness: Kurt Volker, a top American diplomat involved in the negotiations with Ukraine. We look at what Mr. Volker’s testimony — and the text messages he turned over to Congress — revealed about the inquiry’s direction. Guest: Julian E. Barnes, who covers national security for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background coverage: A text exchange appears to show a dispute among American diplomats over whether President Trump was seeking a quid pro quo from Ukraine.A second whistle-blower, said to have firsthand knowledge about the president’s dealings with Ukraine, has come forward.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the House Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry against President Trump have called their first witness a U.S. diplomat involved in the negotiations with Ukraine. Julian Barnes on what that diplomat's testimony revealed about where the inquiry is headed. It's Monday, October 7th. For the first time today, lawmakers will hear from a diplomat directly involved in U.S. activities with Ukraine. The first witness to testify, Kurt Volker, the now former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine.

Last Thursday, Kurt Volker walked into the House of Representatives and testified for nine hours. Three committees are going to question Volker. Volker is a very interesting figure. He is a longtime diplomat. He was ambassador to NATO in the Bush administration. And Volker was the special representative for Ukraine. He was the envoy in charge of trying to make progress in the fight between Russia and Ukraine, this ongoing war.

He's a highly respected national security professional. He started his career at the CIA with a foreign service officer. He was very close to John McCain and has run the McCain Institute. He's a figure of a lot of credibility here. But he was mentioned several times in the whistleblower's complaint, which sparked this inquiry. Volker is named in the whistleblower complaint. And as the controversy over President Trump's call with his Ukrainian counterpart has exploded in Washington, Volker has found himself thrust into the center of it.

He's a top State Department envoy to Ukraine. At least he was until he quit. He resigned from his post. He resigned from his State Department job. And the reason he did that is, one, he was no longer going to be effective at trying to bring peace in Ukraine with all the questions, but it also allowed him to come before the House and testify candidly.

Here's what's interesting about it. Volker didn't come just with the information in his head. He came with dozens of pages of text messages. And just hours after he finished his testimony, the House investigators released the most interesting ones. Text messages released overnight linking a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens in the 2016 election to a White House visit and maybe even military aid. These texts take place between July and September, a pretty crucial period here. We're going to hear from three main people. You have this cast of characters, one political, the other two career.

One is Volker, but Kurt Volker. One is Volker, special envoy to Ukraine. With them, Gordon Sondland, a hotel owner and Republican donor appointed by President Trump to be U.S. ambassador to the European Union. The other is Gordon Sondland. Why would Sondland be involved in these communications? I mean, Ukraine isn't even part of the EU. Well, he's been quoted as saying, quote, the president asked him to get involved. He is a friend of Trump

and the American ambassador to the European Union. The third name, just again for context... And the other diplomat is Bill Taylor. Bill Taylor is effectively running the U.S. embassy in Ukraine since there is no permanent ambassador at this moment. He's the top diplomat in Ukraine sent in, handpicked by Kurt Volker to represent the United States there. Those are the Trump administration officials. As a group, they all think of themselves as advocates for Ukraine.

They're trying in their minds to improve things in the country. They're trying to do what's best for Kiev. And then you have Andrei Yermak. The other person texting here is Andrei Yermak. He's a top advisor to the Ukrainian President Zelensky. And looming in the background throughout these conversations is Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer. Stunning. I'm laughing because yesterday someone was criticizing me when I said what a complicated story this is. He said, it's not complicated

at all. It is the definition of complicated. So let's dive into these texts. Where should we start? Well, we should start with the first one. It's from July 19th. Kurt Volker is writing to Rudy Giuliani. And he writes, as discussed, connecting you here with Andre Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky. connecting you here with Andrei Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky. And then we fast forward to later in the day when Volker is texting with Gordon Sondland.

Remember, he's the EU ambassador. And Volker writes, had breakfast with Rudy this morning, teeing up a call with Yermak Monday. Most important is for Zelensky to say that he will help with the investigation. So what's going on here? Well, that's a reference to the two investigations that Mr. Trump is pushing for. One is an investigation into this company, Burisma, where Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, used to be a board member. And the other is this investigation that Trump wants into the 2016 election and Ukraine's involvement. So this is based on the date about six days before Trump will have a call with Zelensky and Volker and Giuliani are having a conversation about communicating with the Ukraine president's aid

about how important it will be for Zelensky to say that he will do these investigations. This establishes how critical those investigations were to Trump. That's what that call on July 25th is. And so there's all this flurry of organization maneuvering, trying to get the Ukrainians to agree to it. Before the call even happens. Before it happens. Okay. So what's the next text message that matters? The next text message is two days later. And we first hear from Bill Taylor. Remember,

later. And we first hear from Bill Taylor. Remember, he's the U.S.'s top diplomat in Ukraine. And he writes, President Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic re-election politics. And Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, he writes, absolutely, but we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built, irrespective of the pretext. I am worried about the alternative. And what's the alternative? The alternative here is a Ukraine that's cut off from the United States, that does not have a good relationship, and therefore is at the mercy of its larger, more aggressive neighbor, Russia. So these three American diplomats, they are recognizing that Zelensky is being put in a bit of a difficult position. That's right.

And that's right. They realize that Trump and Giuliani are pushing for something, something that the Ukrainians may be reluctant to give. But several of these diplomats clearly think they need to persuade the Ukrainians if this relationship with Trump is going to get off the ground. Okay, so take us to July 25th, to the moment of the call. What do these text messages tell us about that? Right before the call, we see Volker, the envoy to Ukraine, talking to Yermak, the advisor to Zelensky. And Volker is setting up the call. He is kind of outlining what the Ukrainians need to do in it. He writes, assuming President Xi convinces Trump he will investigate, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016, we'll nail down a date for the visit to Washington. Good luck.

And this shows us both what the Ukrainians want and what the Americans want. The Americans want this investigation that is critical to Donald Trump. And the Ukrainians want this public show of support, an invitation to the White House, a sign that America is still in Ukraine's corner. And it feels like those two things are contingent upon one another. Reading this text message, it's very clear that you're only going to get the White House visit if you do the investigations and you say publicly you're going to do the investigations.

So this is a kind of quid pro quo. Very clearly. But it isn't the big quid pro quo that people have been talking about. It's not the one about military assistance. This is about a White House visit. But remember, that's very important to the Ukrainians as well. And why? Why is a White House visit so important to the Ukrainians as well. And why? Why is a White House visit so important to the Ukrainians that the Americans would understand

it's a point of leverage in seeking these investigations? Look, Ukraine is in a very precarious place in this world. They are seeking closer ties to Europe, but they're under huge pressure from Russia. They're in a war with Russia. And having the United States put a friendly arm around Ukraine is very important to them. It is a sort of protection for them. Right. And next, of course, the July 25th phone call between Zelensky and Trump happens, and Trump mentions all that the U.S. does for Ukraine, asks for a favor, and that favor is for Zelensky to begin investigating Ukraine's connection to the

2016 election and Joe Biden and his son. So what happens in this text traffic after that call? So we hear from Yermak, the aide to the Ukrainian president, and he's writing to Volker and he has good news. The phone call went well. And Yermak starts to press for dates for this visit. And this is a clear sign that Ukrainians are going to play ball, that they're going to give Trump what he wants. And they're expecting they're going to get their White House visit in return. Right. I'm looking at this passage and Yermak is saying, by the way, President Zelensky chose September 20th, 21 or 22nd. So, you know,

just let us know. And Volker responds, great, thanks and will do. Like, this is a sign that at this moment in time, everything's moving forward. White House has made an ask. Ukrainians think they're going to get their White House visit in return. that Zelensky has agreed on some level to conduct the investigations that Trump has asked for in the July 25th call and will get this White House visit in return. That's what it looks like from these text messages here. But as we're going to see, it's going to get more complicated. We'll be right back. So, from the Ukrainian point of view,

things are going to move forward now. They want their White House meeting, and they have given President Trump what he wants. But what we're going to see here is that it's not quite enough. Trump and Giuliani want more. They want not just the private promise from Zelensky, but they want a public declaration that he's going to do these investigations that are critical to Donald Trump. So how does that play out? That plays out in a series of text messages on August 9th.

And so we see Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, write to Volcker and he says, I think POTUS really wants the deliverable. What he's saying here is that Trump really wants to see the investigations get going. He wants a public declaration. That's the deliverable. And Sondland goes on and he writes, to avoid misunderstandings, might be helpful to ask Andre, that's Zelensky's aide, Yermak, for a draft statement so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover. Look, this tells us it's not just enough to say a vague, we're going to investigate, but Trump and Giuliani want to see a real specific here. They want the Ukrainians to lay out exactly what they're going to look into. And that's the 2016 election and a company tied to the Biden family. This is an amazing amount of micromanaging for a foreign government, a sovereign government.

An ally. A key partner of the United States. And they are trying to get the government to say something very, very specific. And does Zelensky's administration issue such a statement? They don't. We have Yermak writing to Volker, and he says, I think it's possible to make this declaration and mention all of these things, but we're only going to do that after we get a White House date. The Ukrainians are

playing their own version of hardball. And Volker responds. Let's iron out the statement and use that to get the date, and then President Xi can go forward with it. We have this standoff here. Neither side is giving. And Yermak comes back at Volker. Once we have a date, we'll call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining a vision for the reboot of U.S.-Ukraine relationship, including, among other things, Burisma and election meddling in investigations.

I mean, this is kind of stunning because here is as crystallized a version of this as perhaps you could ever imagine. It's transactional diplomacy at its bluntest. The Ukrainians want something. The U.S. wants something. But what's different here is this is not usually what the American government asks its partners for. I mean, usually you have the U.S. government saying, we want steps for you to fight corruption or to improve your business practices or improve how your military is run.

Here, they're asking for a political investigation that will benefit Donald Trump. So the fact that these two countries are negotiating like this, like, that's not the problem. I mean, it feels like in some ways this is what diplomacy is all about. It's the content.

It's what is on the table here that is so unorthodox. Absolutely. Countries, diplomats, constantly do negotiations about what one side will do and what the other will do. But diplomacy is about

negotiating for the national interest. And here, we have the Ukrainians negotiating for their national interest, and we have the Americans negotiating for the interests of Donald Trump. And his re-election. Yes, his re-election. This is the distillation of a quid pro quo. Absolutely. So the White House sending signals it wants to cut a significant military aid package to Ukraine. And as these texts go on, it's revealed what else is on the table. Something that has critics questioning why the president appears to be favoring Moscow yet again.

After a news media report talking about the Ukraine aid being frozen. That military aid that was passed into law by Congress. It's the very same military aid for Ukraine that was supposed to help, quote, keep Russia at bay. And yet Donald Trump has reportedly been slow walking it all year. We don't know exactly what the American diplomats know here, but we see a change in tone in these text messages. One of them, Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, appears caught unaware. And this leads to the most extraordinary exchanges in these text messages. We have Bill Taylor writing to Volker and Gordon Sondland.

Are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations? are conditioned on investigations. So right away, his suspicion is that there's now a second kind of quid pro quo in the mix here, which is military aid will be released if Zelensky agrees to do these investigations. No longer, as you said, just a White House visit. That's right. And you can tell that the other diplomats are a little bit uncomfortable talking about this quid pro quo so explicitly because Sondland's response to Taylor is a simple, call me. And you see Bill Taylor outline what he says is his nightmare scenario,

the scenario where the Ukrainians make a public commitment to do these investigations, but the U.S. still doesn't release the military assistance. The consequences of that, he writes, is that the Russians would love it and he would quit. Meaning he would quit his job as a diplomat in protest of such an outcome. Exactly. You can see that frustration in the last exchanges we have, these text messages from September 9th. Bill Taylor is again writing to Volker and Sondland and he says, we have already shaken their faith in us. He means Ukraine's faith in the United States.

And Taylor, you can see, is uneasy about what they've asked. And he writes to Sondland, I'm counting on you to be right about this, meaning this public statement that it will unfreeze the aid. And then we have this line from Bill Taylor. As I sat on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. Sondland responds as if he knows these text messages will someday be read by the whole world. By us on a podcast.

Yeah. Sondland writes to Taylor, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The president has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind. The president is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign. I suggest we stop the back and forth by

text. Wow. This is the essence of the controversy. This is the essence of the impeachment inquiry that we're in right now. By the end of this text thread, Julian, it's pretty clear that these three U.S. diplomats, to varying degrees, have become uncomfortable with just how much muck they've stepped in. Yet they've all seemed to do their part in advancing the president's

desires. That's right. All three of these diplomats believe in the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship. They believe the U.S. can help Ukraine. But they've all decided that to make that happen, they're going to help out Donald Trump. And that's a compromise. That's a decision they've made that looks very questionable right now. Is any of this that's being discussed in these texts illegal? It really doesn't matter. Remember, impeachment is a political process. The question in an impeachment case is, did the president abuse his power? And so it doesn't matter if there is a law broken. What matters is if the president

bent the foreign policy of the United States for his own political benefit. And if members of the House and the Senate believe that he did that. Yes. Where do these text messages, what we have just learned from everything that was on Volker's phone, where does that leave the impeachment process? These text messages show the extent that the Trump administration was using the apparatus of government to advance its political goals. This wasn't a one-off phone call. It was U.S. policy to pressure the Ukrainian government

to lean on the new Ukrainian president to conduct an investigation that President Trump wanted for his political benefit. And for Democrats, these unguarded text messages between diplomats are the kind of evidence that allow them to bolster their case for impeachment. And it makes it harder for the president's allies to defend him. Julian, thank you very much. Thank you. Oh, dear. Do you have to take the call?

Okay, I've got this call now. Bye. Bye. Julian here. Since Friday, the leaders of the House impeachment inquiry have widened their investigation, subpoenaing the White House for a trove of documents and requesting information from Vice President Mike Pence to better understand the administration's campaign to pressure Ukraine for political favors. So the Democrats, unfortunately, they have the votes. They

can vote very easily, even though most of them, many of them, don't believe they should do. Speaking to reporters, President Trump acknowledged for the first time that Democrats in the House have enough votes to impeach him, but predicted that Republicans in the Senate would protect him from conviction and removal from office. And then we'll get it to the Senate and we're going to win. The Republicans have been very unified. This is the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country. On Sunday, the lawyers for the whistleblower, whose complaint triggered the impeachment

inquiry, said that they were representing a second whistleblower, an intelligence officer with firsthand knowledge of the president's interactions with Ukraine. that they were representing a second whistleblower, an intelligence officer with first-hand knowledge of the president's interactions with Ukraine. The existence of two whistleblowers, both of whom were alarmed by Trump's conduct, is expected to strengthen the Democrats' case against the president. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Hello, everybody. We're in Las Vegas. I just got out of the hospital a few hours ago, and I'm feeling so much better. Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has acknowledged that he suffered a heart attack last week, around the time he underwent a procedure to clear a blocked artery. For several days, the campaign had refused to answer questions about his condition.

Speaking to reporters outside the hospital, Sanders said that the heart attack would not stop his campaign and that he would appear on stage for the next Democratic debate on October 15th. I just want to thank all of you for the love and warm wishes that you sent me. See you soon on the campaign trail. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.