Tuesday may have been a turning point in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
That’s according to House Democrats, who emerged from a deposition that lasted more than nine hours with the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor saying Taylor’s testimony was explosive and damning to Donald Trump.
Taylor’s 15-page opening statement leaked out, in which he said that Trump made the order to withhold crucial military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine announcing an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.
The statement provided evidence not only of a quid pro quo but also that Trump was personally seeking illegal foreign interference in the 2020 election.
“This testimony is a sea change,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), who is part of the committee that interviewed Taylor, said Tuesday. “I think it could accelerate matters. This will, I think, answer more questions than it raises.”
Taylor painted in excruciating detail how Trump demanded that Ukraine investigate the Bidens, implicating Trump, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Trump donor turned Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and former U.S. Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker all worked together to try to force the quid pro quo.
Taylor wrote in his opening statement:
“Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with [Ukrainian] President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.”
Later, Taylor explained a text message between himself and Sondland, in which Taylor told Sondland that holding up military aid to Ukraine to force a Biden investigation was “crazy.”
“Before these text messages, during our call on September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check. Ambassador Volker used the same terms several days later while we were together at the Yalta European Strategy Conference. I argued to both that the explanation made no sense: the Ukrainians did not ‘owe’ President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was ‘crazy,’ as I had said in my text message to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker on September 9.”
The testimony puts Republicans, who have been defending Trump, in a bind.
They already laid down their marker that a quid pro quo was unacceptable. Now such evidence exists, and they will have to decide whether to continue to defend Trump or stick to their initial red line.
The White House, for its part, is trying to smear Taylor as a “radical” actor — a baseless and ridiculous accusation against a career public servant who served in the military as well as under former President George W. Bush.
Depositions will continue on Wednesday, though others scheduled for this week have been postponed as members of Congress attend memorial services for the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who died last week.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy