Who testified today?
In the morning, impeachment investigators held a joint hearing with Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence. Both listened to the July 25 phone call between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which is at the center of the inquiry.
In the afternoon, they heard testimony from Kurt D. Volker, Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, and Timothy Morrison, a former top National Security Council official. Both were on the witness list that Republicans submitted.
What were the highlights?
Colonel Vindman said he believed that Mr. Trump’s request for Ukraine to open investigations into his political rivals should be viewed as demands, and that they were “inappropriate” and “likely to have significant implications” for national security. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said of the July 25 call. “My worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out.”
Colonel Vindman and Ms. Williams both testified that the hold on nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine was damaging to Ukraine’s ability to confront Russian aggression. “Any signal or sign that U.S. support was wavering would be construed by Russia as potentially an opportunity for them to strengthen their own hand in Ukraine,” Ms. Williams said, relaying what the president of Ukraine told Mr. Pence during a meeting on Sept. 1.
Dressed in his deep-blue Army dress uniform, Colonel Vindman, an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, addressed his father, who fled Ukraine with his family when Colonel Vindman was a toddler. “You made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family,” he said. “Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.” He added: “Here, right matters.”
Mr. Volker portrayed himself as out of touch with Mr. Trump’s Ukraine dealings, saying that he didn’t know of “any linkage between the hold on security assistance and Ukraine pursuing investigations.” He later said that he considered concerns around the 2016 election and Mr. Biden to be “conspiracy theories,” and “not things that we should be pursuing as part of our national security strategy.”
Mr. Morrison explained how the normal National Security Council leadership structure was subverted by Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, saying it was referred to internally as “the Gordon problem.” He said he “decided to keep track of what Ambassador Sondland was doing. I didn’t necessarily always act on things Gordon suggested he believed were important.”
NY Times