The Daily - The ‘Most Damning’ Impeachment Testimony Yet

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

The Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry are calling testimony from the acting envoy to Ukraine the “most damning” yet, implicating President Trump himself in a quid pro quo over military aid to the country. William B. Taylor Jr., a career diplomat who has served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, prepared a 15-page opening statement for investigators on Tuesday. He described his testimony as “a rancorous story about whistle-blowers, Mr. Giuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption and interference in elections.” In his statement, Mr. Taylor documented two divergent channels of United States policymaking in Ukraine, “one regular and one highly irregular.” He said Mr. Trump had used the shadow channel to make America’s relationship with Ukraine — including a $391 million aid package — conditional on its government’s willingness to investigate one of his political rivals, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his family. The question of a quid pro quo for the military aid has been pursued by House Democrats since the beginning of the impeachment inquiry. In Mr. Taylor, investigators have a former ambassador testifying under oath that the allegations are true. Guest: Nicholas Fandos, who covers Congress for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.Background coverage: Here are six key takeaways from Mr. Taylor’s opening statement to impeachment investigators.This is the evidence collected and requested in the impeachment inquiry so far.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Today, the Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry are calling Tuesday's testimony the most damning yet, implicating President Trump himself in a quid pro quo over military aid to Ukraine. It's Wednesday, October 23rd. This is Edward. How can I help you?

Hi there. I'm trying to reach Nick Fandos from the New York Times. Oh, yeah. I just saw him go into booth one. Hold on a second. Let me transfer you over. This is Nick. Hey, it's Michael. Hi, Michael. I just saw him go into booth one. Hold on a second. Let me transfer you over. Hey, this is Nick. Hey, it's Michael. Hi, Michael. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Long time no talk. Yeah, it's been a full 72 hours.

Nick Fandos covers Congress for The Times. Nick, where did we leave off with you last week? So remember, last week we heard testimony from a string of American diplomats, both career diplomats and political appointees working for Donald Trump. And what they described day after day in testimony was essentially the traditional American foreign policy apparatus getting sidelined or pushed aside by President Trump, his personal lawyer, and a cadre of political appointees who were close around him and were setting the agenda for the country's policy toward Ukraine.

Right. policy toward Ukraine. Right. And the names that kept coming up again and again were Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland. That's right. And by Thursday, we heard from Sondland himself, who you'll remember is the ambassador to the European Union. He's a former Trump political donor. Sondland, after witness after witness this week, had placed him at the center of this shadow foreign policy, if you will, came in and essentially said, you know, hey, I know there's all this attention on me, but I was merely following the directions of President Trump. And Nick, what did we hear in this testimony about what the point of this shadow structure was? Why have it? What are they up to?

So a lot of this testimony revolved around a meeting that the Ukrainians wanted to have with President Trump at the White House that they believed would lend credibility to the new administration in that country. And the questions that came up again and again were, was there a quid pro quo that the Trump administration was trying to extract investigations from the Ukrainians into the president's political rivals in exchange for that meeting, that they were holding out that meeting and say, we'll only give you this if we get what we want. But what's interesting is what they weren't testifying about. For the most part, there was very little discussion last week of the military aid that President Trump had ordered to be frozen this summer. This is almost $400 million in security funds that Congress allocated in a bipartisan fashion for Ukraine.

And there have been allegations, first from the whistleblower that initiated this case, and throughout, that that aid may have been frozen as a leverage point as well as another kind of quid pro quo to extract these politically advantageous investigations. But we weren't hearing a whole lot about that as the week wore on. Right. There were two allegations of a quid pro quo. There was the White House visit in exchange for these investigations. And then there was this $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. And my sense is that the allegation that the military aid had been held up in this scheme was by far the more explosive of the two. That's right. Remember, when House Democrats launched this impeachment inquiry a little bit more than a month ago, it was the prospect of $400 million in bipartisan-approved military aid that had most alarmed lawmakers in both parties. ones from swing districts that President Trump won in 2016,

who are kind of teetering on the edge as they face re-election, to come on board and say, yes, we do support an inquiry. They threw crucial support behind this investigation explicitly because it was tied to national security. Right. And what did you make of the fact that the money, which had been the source of so much focus, wasn't really coming up. Did that at all cause you to wonder, as I will admit it did for me, if the military aid aspect of the story maybe just wasn't there? If it hadn't maybe been something that the president was holding over Ukraine to get

these investigations he wanted into the Democrats? I think that that certainly began to feel like more of a possibility. You know, the Trump administration has given publicly other reasons for withholding this aid. And in some respects, it makes sense that they would have withheld it when they were looking to cut down on the expense of foreign aid all over the country. So I wouldn't have been altogether surprised if that part of the story continued to shrink away. At the same time, so much of what the original whistleblower who has brought this case to the fore, who helped launch this impeachment inquiry indirectly, has alleged, has borne out to date that I don't think we could fully rule out the idea that the

aid had been held up as leverage for these investigations. And so it just remained a kind of open, tantalizing question. Will this bear out or won't it? And that's where we pick things up this week. Okay, so get us up to speed about what actually happened on Tuesday. on Tuesday. So on Tuesday morning, William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine right now, arrived on Capitol Hill for his own deposition with House impeachment investigators. And what do we need to know about Bill Taylor besides that?

So Taylor is another one of these career national security officials who has served Democrats and Republicans. He's been serving the country, he told investigators today, for 50 years, starting as a cadet in West Point, serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem. During George W. Bush's administration, he was an ambassador to Ukraine. And he had actually retired when the State Department contacted him early this year after Brie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador, was ousted by President Trump and asked him if he'd be willing to come back to take control of the American mission in Ukraine and help to implement the president's policies.

And he began explaining to investigators today that he knew, in a sense, what he was getting into, and he had real pause as he looked toward taking this job. He sought assurances from the State Department, essentially, that he would be able to exercise policies he saw fit, and that he wasn't going to be a victim of the same kind of political games that she was. With those assurances, he ultimately decided in May that he would sign up, and he flew over to Kiev and began his role as ambassador. What came next, he made pretty clear, is something like his worst nightmare.

And on Tuesday, he outlined that nightmare in a 15-page opening statement, which he read methodically over 40 minutes to investigators gathered behind closed doors. And what does he say in this opening statement? So Taylor begins a lot like a lot of witnesses last week began. He describes two channels of foreign policy, an official channel and the kind of shadow or irregular channel toward Ukraine. And he says, basically, at first, these things are aligned. He told investigators, when I first arrived in Kiev in June and July, the actions of both the regular and the irregular channels of foreign policy

serve the same goal, a strong U.S.-Ukrainian partnership. But what he documents in copious notes, in calls that he reconstructs, in experiences that he has with other diplomats involved, is a divergence of those two channels, a disintegration of the first one, essentially, in favor of the second. And he says, it became clear to me by August that the channels had diverged in their objectives. And what happened that led him to feel by August that there were two different sets of priorities here, that these things were no longer in line? So it's not long after Taylor arrives in Ukraine

that it becomes increasingly clear to him that something funny is going on. At first, he hears from Ambassador Sondland that what the president really wants from the new Ukrainian leadership is a commitment to investigate his political opponents, the Bidens, and a conspiracy theory about Democratic and Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, and that to secure a visit to the White House, a visit the Ukrainians badly want, will be contingent upon them publicly committing to conducting those investigations. As the summer goes on, he learns in July that inexplicably, and despite the guidance of the Defense Department and the State Department,

and despite the guidance of the Defense Department and the State Department, the president has ordered the Office of Management and Budget to freeze the $400 million in security aid that is meant to be delivered to the Ukrainians. Taylor is completely alarmed by this. Remember, Taylor really knows the threat to Ukraine well, and he understands the power that this money has to help prop up its military. But what he doesn't understand is why, at first, the money is being held up. And he describes shortly after hearing that it's going to be withheld traveling to the northern border of Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces are coming into contact with mounting hostile Russian-led forces. And thinking to himself, I know this aid is being withheld and these guys don't. And this is the face of the threat.

More Ukrainians are going to die if the United States assistance does not come through. And so he is really shaken by this and describes a series of meetings where he and others are trying to push to get it reinstated. And it's around this time, Taylor testifies, he got on the phone with Sondland. And Sondland essentially said to him that everything, the White House meeting and the aid, were contingent upon the Ukrainians committing to these investigations. He said Sondland drew a analogy. He said, think of the president like a businessman. And when a businessman is about to sign a check to

someone who owes him something, the businessman asked that that person pay up before signing the check. Now, Taylor is completely taken aback by this. In his view, you know, the analogy doesn't make any sense. Why would the Ukrainians owe President Trump anything? The security systems have been allocated, and its delivery made sense not just for the Ukrainians, but for the United States' strategic interest. So this is a kind of key theme that to him exposes that to President Trump and those who are enabling him in this effort, it's not about America's national security. It's just about these investigations. And that is what the president

is after. That's the sole goal of his foreign policy here, of this second channel that broke off from the first and seems to be, at this point, more or less the one that matters to the White House. We'll be right back. So, Nick, how do you find out about all this testimony on Tuesday? So Tuesday was another long day outside of the House Intelligence Committee skiff. But it was a little unusual in that not long after the testimony began, Democrats began to come out. I'm not going to comment on what he said inside there. And without giving specifics, essentially say on the record. In my 10 short months in Congress, this is my most disturbing day in Congress so far. This is a pretty remarkable thing we've

just heard. And his opening statement is devastating to Donald Trump. This may be the most significant testimony yet. It was very damning for the president. And his opening statement is devastating to Donald Trump. This may be the most significant testimony yet. It was very damning for the president. And they all walk out with copies of his 15 page opening statement in their hands, but none of them will give it up to the press. So, you know, I basically spent hours running around, working the phones, trying to get my hands on this piece of paper. And only by the early afternoon was I able to get a copy and start reading it and making sense of it. And Nick, is a lot of what these Democrats are so excited about outside this secure room where

you're waiting on Tuesday, is that now the money, the military aid, is back in the picture. It's now showing up in these hearings after a week where it had not been present. I think that's right. I mean, what they got with Bill Taylor today was somebody who had been there, had had a front seat to this whole story, come in and say, yeah, this thing in the middle, the military aid, the kind of the worst possible thing in all of these allegations, that happened. That was true. And here's why that matters. You know, Democrats will tell you that any quid pro quo in this case

is inappropriate. Even withholding a White House meeting is inappropriate and potentially impeachable from their point of view. But it's the security aid, you know, the withholding of a significant chunk of money that Republicans and Democrats both support, that they think is an obvious step for the United States to take for its own interests and to help its allies in Europe, that that would be withheld is, in political terms, kind of another magnitude of significance. And it's the thing that Democrats think Republicans and, frankly, voters around the country are more likely to be convinced by, that hundreds of millions of dollars in hard military aid to fight a conflict against the Russians just resonates more with people.

You know, that's a bigger kind of thing to be messing around with than a meeting at the White House, which, you know, most people don't know why a meeting gets scheduled or doesn't get scheduled. So by reinserting the military aid into the center of this, it reopens the possibility that this case could become more than a partisan exercise. But Nick, as you said, the whole impeachment inquiry began with a phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian president, in which military aid appeared to be withheld in exchange for these investigations that Trump wants. What's different about what happened on Tuesday that makes it such a big deal? So what we had before was an anonymous allegation from a whistleblower whose information didn't seem to be firsthand. And in any case, the public doesn't know who that whistleblower is. They can't evaluate that person's claims. What we had on

Tuesday was the top American diplomat in Ukraine, the guy who was supposed to be managing the relationship between the two countries, coming forward and testifying on the record before Congress that he saw a quid pro quo, that he saw the aid being withheld to extract political gain for the president of the United States. And he offered an authoritative, detailed, and vivid account of how that went down. And that goes a long way. It's not the whole case, but it goes a long way in establishing for Democrats and for this investigation that what they suspected, what was initially alleged, did in fact occur.

did in fact occur. So at this point, what was first an anonymous allegation delivered by a whistleblower was just very much confirmed by a ambassador under oath, like you just said. So what more evidence do people on the impeachment inquiry committees need, do you think, to vote to impeach the president? So I think what they want is to continue moving towards these kind of inner concentric circles. So if they talk to the ambassador now, next they want to hear from the White House Budget Office to hear what order exactly came down from President Trump to suspend the aid. What did that sound like? What did people in the office think? What debate happened there? They want to know what was happening in the National Security Council, where advisors and aides to the president were listening to a lot of these calls and interactions in real time,

not to mention talking with him, and will have their own accounts as to what was going down. So, you know, basically, if Taylor has sketched in this important part of the picture, they're looking for additional witnesses that are kind of even closer to the action to fill in kind of flourishes and details that will either back up or disprove what he had to say. Because ultimately what this is really about is about President Trump. You're not impeaching these other officials around him. The House would vote to impeach President Trump, and they need to be able to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt in the Senate. And so what they're really after is as precise and vivid a picture as possible of what President Trump was doing and saying and meaning as he took these actions. Right. They want the closest thing

possible to direct irrefutable evidence that the president himself said, withhold this money until I get my investigation. And it sounds like on Tuesday, they got a lot closer to that, but perhaps not all the way. That's right. And that's why the investigation will keep grinding on. Nick, thank you very much. Glad to be with you again Happy to do it

We'll be right back Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, Turkey and Russia announced that both countries would take joint control over northeast Syria, a major victory for Russia that expands its influence at the expense of the U.S. and Kurdish forces. The Times reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has long wanted Russia to play a bigger role in the Middle East. In a sign that that strategy was working, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,

traveled to Putin's summer home in Sochi on Tuesday to announce the joint control agreement. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.