Evidence was outlined today in Bill Taylor's testimony that Trump withheld aid until Ukraine agreed to investigate the Bidens. Not only did he withhold aid conditioned upon such said investigation he also wanted Ukraine's President to issue an on-camera statement saying he was opening investigations into the Bidens.
Taylor is the acting ambassador to Ukraine that Trump put in place when he fired Marie Yovanovitch upon Rudy Giuliani telling Trump she wasn't willing to play ball in their illegal scheme.
1. The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine told lawmakers Tuesday that President Trump made the release of military aid contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain.
2. In a 15-page opening statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Taylor stood by his characterization that it was “crazy” to make the assistance contingent on investigations he found troubling.
3. He described how officials from the Pentagon, State Department, CIA and former National Security Adviser John Bolton tried unsuccessfully to get a meeting with Trump to release the aid. He testified that Ukrainian officials were blindsided by the White House’s decision to release a rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky with “virtually no notice of the release and they were livid.”
4. Taylor walked lawmakers through a series of conversations he had with other U.S. diplomats who were trying to obtain what one had called the “deliverable” of Ukrainian help investigating Trump’s political rivals.
5. “In August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular informal channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons,” Taylor said.
6. Taylor testified that Trump told Sondland himself in a September 7 phone call that Zelensky must “go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelensky should want to do this himself.”
7. Amb. 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 President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,’” Taylor told House investigators. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.’”
8. An official working on the impeachment inquiry said Tuesday that Taylor is testifying under subpoena after the State Department attempted to block his appearance.
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