The NPR Politics Podcast - Diplomat Testifies Trump Directly Linked Ukrainian Aid To Political Investigations

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Longtime U.S. diplomat William Taylor is testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday as part of the House impeachment inquiry, and Democrats say his insight is bolstering their case against President Trump. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Bob from Holland, Michigan, where I just got back from getting my flu shot. You should get yours too, because it protects you and others in the community, especially the very young and the very old. Today's podcast was recorded at 415 Eastern on Tuesday, October 22nd. Things may have changed since the recording. Sue, you're always better than I am at getting your flu shot on time. Have you gotten yours yet? I am at getting your flu shot on time. Have you gotten yours yet?

I have not gotten mine yet. I've been a little busy covering something called an impeachment inquiry, but I'm going to get it done. Let's vote for it this week. I'm going to do it this week. I promise. Flu shots, important. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And fun fact, this is the second podcast taping of the day. We had recorded an episode about the testimony of Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine who was testifying before the House today. And then his opening statement was released. Other outlets published it. NPR has authenticated it. And Ryan, Sue, it's a pretty big deal. It's a pretty big deal. I would say the all caps bold headline coming out of it,

and I just finished reading it as you did, Scott, is that it essentially corroborates the allegation at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. And that is that President Trump personally directed withholding military assistance to Ukraine in order to pressure the country to investigate not only the 2016 election, but also the company of Burisma, that is the company that Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, sat on, as well as the Biden family, one of his potential political opponents in the 2020 election. Now, Ryan, you went, whoo, kind of you made the whoo type face. I did. I did make the whoo type face. Why? Taylor takes the reader step by step through what transpired this summer. And we're talking meetings, phone calls, text messages, what was going on behind the scenes, and makes clear that there was the regular channel of foreign policy that he was a part of as the top diplomat in Kiev and members of the National Security Council were and folks at the State Department.

And then there was what he calls an irregular channel that was led by the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and the energy secretary, Rick Perry, as well as the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that was pushing for the things that Sue mentioned and holding up at the direction of the president military aid to Ukraine in order to force the Ukrainians to carry out these investigations. Now, the military aid was the one part of this picture where it wasn't quite clear what happened, right? We had the partial transcript of the call where Trump asked Zelensky for a favor. We had several other admitted acts or admitted goals that Trump and Giuliani and others were pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. The question of the military assistance was key here,

and that's why it was such a big deal when Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, said last week, yes, there was a quid pro quo, get over it, in his many words. He since walked that back. But Ryan, can you point to the part of this opening statement where Taylor lays this out, that there was a direct holdup in the military aid? So Taylor takes us step by step through it. So Taylor knew earlier they had indications in July that the aid had been held up by the Office of Management and Budget and that it was being held up at the direction of the president and the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. But in September, Taylor says that he has a phone conversation with Tim Morrison, who's a National Security Council official. And he relates a conversation that Sondland had with a Ukrainian official in September in which Sondland told the Ukrainian, quote, that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky, that's the Ukrainian president, committed to pursue the Burisma investigation. I was alarmed by what Mr.

Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation. And then Taylor goes on to say, this was the first time I had heard that the security assistance, not just the White House meeting, was conditioned on the investigations. Now, Sue, when we recorded earlier and we hadn't yet seen this document, you had talked to several Democrats coming out of this testimony and they were saying this is a pretty big deal and you'll see why. Can you walk us through why exactly this filling in the blanks matter so much as we look at the big political picture of all of this? Well, I think a couple of things. One, Taylor is another witness that the White House did try to block from coming up to Capitol Hill. They got around it again by issuing a subpoena for him. So he's coming up to willfully testify. So that is part of this sort of two tracks of testimony. There's been

career state and national security officials who have been willing to come up and talk to Congress, and he's one of them. There's also the other members of the administration that the committee that the inquiry would like to hear from that the White House is not going to let come up people like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence and others. But what Taylor's testimony does, one, he is a key fact witness in this inquiry. He had direct firsthand knowledge, direct communications with other key players and direct communication with the White House. He's probably as close as they're going to get and was a key player in multiple points of this conversation, not just certain phone calls. But as Ryan said, he was involved

at every point along the way. One thing he was not involved in was the exact July 25th phone call between the two presidents. He was not on that call, which also goes to his point that there was two tracks here. There was the official U.S. government track that he thought he was a part of operating towards one goal and this other side track that was what he alleges at the direction of the president trying to extract a separate policy that would only seemingly benefit the president. Yeah, he calls it an irregular track several times. And it's important to note who Taylor is. He's someone who was previously U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. So he was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush. He has served in senior diplomatic positions over the course of a very long career for the U.S. government. He served in Vietnam. This is a man with a sterling reputation.

He's not someone who you can attack as some sort of political hack. And that is why Democrats who I've talked to today, people like Rajna Krishnamoorthy, who's a Democrat on the Intel Committee, pointed to that record as saying this is why his testimony can be trusted. He's also under oath. But he also made the point that if and when the House has open public hearings, Bill Taylor is someone that they would want the public to hear from directly. And one other thing about his testimony today is that a lot of it is corroborated by what we have seen come out so far. Granted, cherry picked, but what we have seen come out so far from other people who have spoken to House lawmakers as part of this inquiry.

So Ryan, we've talked about this before, but I want to hit on it one more time because Taylor early in his testimony makes this point pretty clear. Why was this military aid so important to Ukraine to begin with? So remember, Ukraine still is fighting a Russian-backed insurgency in the eastern part of the country. More than 10,000 people have died in this conflict that has gone on for several years. And U.S. support is critical to Ukraine as it attempts to counter that Russian-supported insurgency that we see in eastern Ukraine. And Taylor actually mentions going to the front lines this summer to be briefed by Ukrainian military leaders, commanders up on the front lines. And he said that as he was being briefed, he knew that the U.S. was withholding assistance. And he said that that made him feel uncomfortable because here he was on the front lines of this

conflict. Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance is the line. Right. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, what happens next? Maddie Safaya here, host of a new daily science podcast from NPR called Shortwave. This week, the first all-female spacewalk. We got to talk to both of those astronauts in space. We have you loud and clear, NPR. Listen for that and subscribe to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, we are back.

Sue, one of the things we have repeatedly talked about is that this is a political process, and even though Democrats would likely have the votes to impeach President Trump in the House, it's a real uphill climb in the Senate where 20 Republicans would have to change their minds on the president. And that just seems really hard to imagine. How much does some clear cut evidence like this change that dynamic, if at all? It's a little too soon to say. I would say that Taylor's testimony is high impact in the course

of this investigation. It will make an impression. Will it test Republicans' loyalty to the president? I'm hard pressed to say that it will, because what we have seen consistently so far is Republicans very willing to stand behind the president at virtually all turns. It will be curious to see how they respond to this. What the Republican argument has been a lot of the way has been not necessarily that the president didn't do it, but that it wasn't wrong, or at least it certainly doesn't rise to the level of impeachable offense. And I think we'll more likely continue to see that. But I think to your point, Scott, especially in the Senate, I think that this is the kind of testimony that at the very least makes people who want to be on the president's

side more and more uncomfortable. And Sue, it seems like that in this testimony, as we've said, this is the first time where we've really seen someone who would be in a position to know, to say that the military assistance was indeed directly tied to Ukraine conducting these investigations. And directly ordered by the president. That's the key point. Right. And there have been some Republicans kind of on the fence who we thought they were waiting to hear those exact words. Right. Yeah, they they were. And I think, again, when it goes to the Senate question, I mean, Taylor is a very credible witness. He's a career official. He's someone

that is respected and known across the political spectrum. And it's very hard to deny that kind of testimony. The thing that I think just from the optics that Republicans have going for them is that this is all happening behind closed doors. This would be a very different matter if Bill Taylor was saying this stuff on live on national television. I do think it will continue to put the pressure on Democrats to release the full contents of this investigation, all of the idea of a direct tie between military aid and political assistance. And that's one reason why when Mick Mulvaney said what he said last week, he was in such a rush to walk it back. Right. And the question will be put to them. And one thing you have heard Republicans in the Senate say to sort of avoid responding to the day to day is they will ultimately be jurors.

If this if articles of impeachment are approved in the House and it gets sent to the Senate, they will act as jurors. And a lot of them have used that to kind of say, I'm not going to weigh in on the evidence piecemeal as it comes out. I'm going to take it as it comes over to us and decide on the facts. Then I think we'll probably hear more of that line of thought instead of responding to every single allegation in his testimony. All right. Pretty sure we'll be talking about this tomorrow and any other new details that come out tonight and tomorrow during the day. That's it for today, though. And you can catch up with all of our coverage in the meantime on NPR.org and your local public radio station. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.