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The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: Latest Updates
After two days of no-shows, David Hale appeared on Capitol Hill to testify. More transcripts may also be released.
Right Now
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, just announced the first public hearings in the inquiry.
Here’s what you need to know:
- House Committees will hold the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry next week.
- A State Dept. official began testifying this morning, the first administration official who appeared as scheduled this week.
- The lawyer for one key witness disputes another’s account of coffee and cordial chats.
- Trump liked what he read in Kurt Volker’s transcript.
- From Tuesday: House Democrats released revised testimony from Sondland and summoned Mulvaney to appear.
- Catch up on impeachment: What you need to know
House Committees will hold the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry next week.
House Democrats will begin convening public impeachment hearings next week, they announced on Wednesday, initially calling three marquee witnesses to begin making a case for President Trump’s impeachment in public.
The hearings will kick off on Wednesday, with testimony from William B. Taylor Jr., the top American envoy in Ukraine, and George Kent, a top State Department official, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. On Friday, Mr. Schiff’s committee will hear from Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, he said.
“More to come,” Mr. Schiff added on Twitter.
Next week, the House Intelligence Committee will hold its first open hearings as part of the impeachment inquiry.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) November 6, 2019
On Wednesday, November 13, 2019, we will hear from William Taylor and George Kent.
On Friday, November 15, 2019, we will hear from Marie Yovanovitch.
More to come.
All three witnesses have already spoken privately with investigators.
— Nicholas Fandos
A State Dept. official began testifying this morning, the first administration official who appeared as scheduled this week.
David Hale, the No. 3 official at the State Department, arrived on Wednesday morning to testify in the impeachment inquiry, the first administration official this week to comply with investigators’ request to appear. Democrats want to ask Mr. Hale, the under secretary for political affairs, about the ouster of the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, and why he and others did not defend her against political attacks.
The recall of Ms. Yovanovitch was part of the shadow foreign policy effort on Ukraine driven largely by Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, who sought to smear her as disloyal to the president. Ms. Yovanovitch told investigators that she personally asked Mr. Hale to talk to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about issuing a statement of support. She said she never heard back.
Mr. Hale is one of four Trump administration officials who had been summoned to testify on Wednesday.
The three others were Russell T. Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget; T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a counselor at the State Department who was among the officials listening in on Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with the president of Ukraine; and Rick Perry, the energy secretary. None of them were expected to appear on Wednesday. Mr. Vought and Mr. Brechbuhl were subpoenaed after they failed to appear at depositions last month.
Democrats are rushing to call the last of the witnesses they are seeking to interview as they wrap up the fact-finding phase of their inquiry and move toward public hearings as soon as next week. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has indicated he will count refusals to appear as part of an article of impeachment against Mr. Trump for obstruction of Congress.
The lawyer for one key witness disputes another’s account of coffee and cordial chats.
The lawyer for Fiona Hill, a former top White House foreign policy adviser, on Wednesday accused Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, of having fabricated conversations with Ms. Hill during his testimony to impeachment investigators.
Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and political donor before his diplomatic appointment, said that he had a cordial relationship with Ms. Hill, according to a transcript of his testimony released on Tuesday. Mr. Sondland noted several times that he talked with Ms. Hill over coffee, at one point describing her as furious at Mr. Trump and “sort of shaking. She was pretty mad.”
In a tweet, Lee Wolosky, Ms. Hill’s lawyer, said that Mr. Sondland had “fabricated communications with Dr. Hill, none of which were over coffee.” He added that Ms. Hill, who resigned in July before Mr. Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine, told Mr. Sondland what she told lawmakers, that “the lack of coordination on Ukraine” was disastrous and that “the circumstances of the dismissal” of Ms. Yovanovitch were “shameful.”
Ms. Hill has told investigators that she viewed Mr. Sondland as a national security risk because of his lack of experience.
Trump liked what he read in Kurt Volker’s transcript.
Mr. Trump on Wednesday thanked Kurt D. Volker, his former special envoy to Ukraine, for telling investigators that he did not know anything about a quid pro quo. Impeachment investigators on Tuesday released the transcript of Mr. Volker’s testimony.
Mr. Volker made the remarks in response to an investigator’s question about the conversations he had with two other witnesses in early September. Mr. Volker said he did not have conversations about a quid pro quo because he did not know that there was one.
Mr. Volker resigned in September amid the Ukraine controversy and provided key testimony to investigators, including the detail that he warned Mr. Trump’s private attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that the Biden-Ukraine narrative that he and the president were advancing was not credible weeks before Mr. Trump’s July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine.
From Tuesday: House Democrats released revised testimony from Sondland and summoned Mulvaney to appear.
Mr. Sondland revised his testimony this week to add that he told Ukrainian officials that military aid was tied to their commitment to investigations President Trump wanted.
“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said in a new sworn statement, which House investigators released along with the transcript of his original testimony.
On Tuesday, impeachment investigators also summoned Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, to appear for a deposition on Friday. Mr. Mulvaney was deeply involved in the alternate Ukraine foreign policy campaign and has been inconsistent in his accounts of the July 25 phone call that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
Last month, Mr. Mulvaney acknowledged that the White House had held hostage nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a pledge to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals. He later retracted his statement and is not expected to appear for the deposition.
Catch up on impeachment: What you need to know
Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works and here’s why political influence in foreign policy matters.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
Read about the Democrats’ rules to govern impeachment proceedings.
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