A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 , 2019
HOUSE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS
same thing,” Kent said. What
Biden requested, Kent said, was
the removal of “a corrupt prose-
cutor general... who had under-
mined a system of criminal inves-
tigation that we built with Ameri-
can money to build corruption
cases.” Shokin, Kent said, had
“destroyed the entire ecosystem
that we were trying to create,”
and he credited Biden for leading
a U.S. effort to combat corruption
in Ukraine.
Democrats also questioned
Kent about the campaign waged
by Trump’s personal lawyer, Ru-
dolph W. Giuliani, to oust theformer U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Giu-
liani and Ukraine’s ex-chief pros-
ecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, have ac-
cused Yovanovitch of providing a
“do not prosecute list” to Ukrai-
nian officials to protect Biden
and others.
Kent adamantly rejected those
allegations, saying, “I have every
reason to believe it is not true.”
He described Lutsenko as a “cor-
rupt” prosecutor with question-
able motives and defended Yo-
vanovitch as “dedicated, as is
every U.S. government official in
Ukraine, to help Ukrainiansovercome the legacy of corrup-
tion.”
Kent did help Republicans es-
tablish that there was concern
about the appearance of a con-
flict of interest when Biden’s son
Hunter was given a seat on the
board of the Ukrainian energy
company Burisma while Biden
led Ukraine policy for the Obama
administration.
Kent said that he raised his
concerns with Biden’s national
security staff in a briefing call in
February 2015 that the younger
Biden’s position on the board
“could create the perception of aJune, appeared wary of questions
from lawmakers of both parties
that called for speculation or
sought to draw him away from a
just-the-facts recitation.
He mostly kept his answers
short: a crisp “yes, sir,” or “I don’t
believe so, ma’am.”
Asked for his views after Kent
had said that Trump’s July 25
phone call was troubling, Taylor
replied only: “I agree.”
Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja
Krishnamoorthi’s request for
elaboration elicited one further
point. Taylor said he found
Trump’s disparaging remarks
about his predecessor, Ambassa-
dor Marie Yovanovitch, “a cause
for concern.”
While Taylor did not interact
with Trump, he has served as a
crucial witness because he was in
touch with diplomats and others
working on both the official and
unofficial aspects of U.S. policy
toward Ukraine and its new gov-
ernment.
The top U.S. envoy to Ukraine
said that when he arrived in that
country in June he “found a con-
fusing and unusual arrangement
for making U.S. policy toward
Ukraine.”
His detailed account of what he
called a “highly irregular” parallel
Ukraine policy gave Democratsthe clearest road map for an argu-
ment that Trump had abused his
office by making an improper de-
mand of a foreign leader.
Retracing his closed-door testi-
mony late last month, Taylor de-
scribed how the traditional State
Department-led foreign policy
structure became increasingly
sidelined in the weeks after he
took the top job in Kyiv.
A careful note-taker, Taylor
kept logs of his discussions with
other diplomats last summer, as
his concern grew over what he
saw as a hijacking of U.S. policy
toward a vulnerable ally.
He was prepared to quit in
August, after just two months,
over what he saw as a shift away
from strong support for Ukraine,
Taylor said.
“There appeared to be two
channels of U.S. policymaking
and implementation, one regular
and one highly irregular,” Taylor
told the impeachment proceed-
ings held in public for the first
time.
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.)
asked if either Taylor or Kent
would identify an impeachable
offense by Trump in the July 25
phone call, then cut Taylor off as
his time for questions dwindled.
House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Ca-lif.) intervened, and Taylor
cracked a smile.
“Mr. Ratcliffe, I would just like
to say that I’m not here... to
decide about impeachment. That
is not what either of us are here to
do. This is your job,” Taylor said.
Ratcliffe resumed by telling
Schiff to “restore time to the clock
to one minute.”
“No,” Schiff said, “but you may
continue at 22 seconds.” The audi-
ence chuckled quietly, and Taylor
suppressed another smile.
Later, Taylor defused moments
of good-television tension that
some Republicans appeared to try
to stoke.
“Since you learned it from oth-
ers, you could be wrong, correct?”
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio)
asked of Taylor’s testimony. “...
They could be wrong, or they
could be mistaken, or they could
have heard it incorrectly, right,
Ambassador Taylor?”
“People make mistakes,” Taylor
said agreeably, as he propped his
elbow on the desk.
Taylor told lawmakers in his
opening statement that he has
been appointed to government
posts by every president since
Ronald Reagan, including Trump.
He said he stands by his earlier
characterization that “withhold-
ing security assistance in ex-BY ANNE GEARAN
AND ELISE VIEBECK
William Brockenbrough Taylor
Jr., West Point class of ’69, Viet-
nam War veteran, Bronze Star
recipient, career public servant,
possesses a basso profundo voice
and a patrician bearing that lent
gravitas to his star turn Wednes-
day in the impeachment inquiry
into whether President Trump
abused his office.
Taylor’s lawyerly and televi-
sion-ready delivery as a leadoff
witness in the public phase of the
inquiry put a face to the alarm of
top State Department officials
over the apparent conditioning of
U.S. military aid on investigations
of Trump’s political rivals.
Over about five hours, the act-
ing U.S. ambassador to Ukraine
remained mostly unflappable.
“I don’t consider myself a star
witness for anything,” Taylor said
under questioning by Rep. Jim
Jordan (R-Ohio) that implied Tay-
lor was doing Democrats’ bidding.
“They do,” Jordan shot back,
referring to the majority Demo-
crats.
“I think I was clear that I’m not
here to take any particular side or
the other,” Taylor replied evenly.
Taylor has emerged as a singu-
lar engine in the impeachment
probe, delivering two rounds of
testimony in three weeks that ad-
vanced the narrative and pointed
at Trump’s involvement in the
alleged quid pro quo.
Until Wednesday, the veteran
diplomat had little public profile.
But by the end of the hearing,
Taylor’s low-key sincerity had
made him a cult figure among
observers online — the subject of
memes, adoring tweets and arti-
cles that compared his vocal tim-
bre to that of broadcaster Walter
Cronkite.
For Republicans, Taylor also of-
fered an opening: an opportunity
to undermine the impeachment
inquiry as a “sham” fed by second-
hand or uncorroborated informa-
tion. GOP lawmakers repeatedly
noted that Taylor was not a party
to the phone call between Trump
and Ukrainian President Volod-
ymyr Zelensky that is at the heart
of the inquiry, and that he had not
spoken directly with Trump.
Republicans also sought to
question the loyalty and motives
of Taylor and fellow State Depart-
ment witness George Kent, as
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), did
by implication at the start of the
House Intelligence Committee
hearing.
Nunes sarcastically congratu-
lated the witnesses for passing
Democrats’ “star chamber audi-
tion” to testify publicly, and said
he wanted to remind listeners of
“the immense damage a politi-
cized bureaucracy has done to
Americans’ faith” in government.
“Elements of the civil service
have decided that they, not the
president, are really in charge,”
Nunes said, as Taylor looked on
impassively.
For Democrats, Taylor is the
face of selfless public service,
someone whose background and
demeanor make a charge of parti-
san skulduggery hard to stick.
He also provided the one big
revelation of the first day of public
hearings: a description of a phone
call in which he said Trump spoke
to another diplomat and checked
on the status of the investigations
he had urged Ukraine to pursue.
But Taylor did not help Demo-
crats in one key respect: He re-
peatedly said he has no informa-
tion to suggest that Ukrainian
officials were aware early on that
crucial military aid had been put
on ice.
Taylor, 72, who was called out of
retirement to take the Kyiv post inchange for help with a domestic
political campaign in the United
States would be ‘crazy.’ ”
He provided new information
that Democrats said bolsters a
case that Trump applied improper
pressure to Zelensky, who was
elected on an anti-corruption
platform in April. He described
how a member of his staff at the
U.S. Embassy in Kyiv had over-
heard Trump speaking with U.S.
Ambassador to the European
Union Gordon Sondland on
July 26. That was the day after
Trump told Zelensky in their
phone conversation that he want-
ed the “favor” of Ukrainian inves-
tigations into 2020 Democratic
presidential contender Joe
Biden’s son Hunter, who had
served on the board of a Ukraini-
an gas company.
Sondland had called Trump on
a mobile phone from a Kyiv res-
taurant on July 26 to update him
on meetings he was having in the
city, Taylor said.
The aide heard Trump through
the phone asking about “the in-
vestigations,” to which Sondland
said the Ukrainians were ready to
move forward, according to Tay-
lor.
Taylor said that after the call,
the aide asked Sondland what
Trump thought about Ukraine
and Sondland had replied that
Trump cares “more about the in-
vestigations of Biden” that the
president’s personal attorney Ru-
dolph W. Giuliani “was pressing
for.”
Taylor said he had only learned
of this conversation last week, so
had not included it in a closed-
door deposition on Oct. 22.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney
(D-N.Y.) walked Taylor through
his U.S. Military Academy and
military career, including that he
was No. 5 in a class of 800 and took
a tough infantry assignment in
Vietnam, in an apparent effort to
embarrass Republicans.
Taylor himself looked embar-
rassed, though proud, and then
appeared relieved when the
questioning turned to his discus-
sions with a Ukrainian military
commander he said was eager
and grateful for the aid in ques-
tion.
Before the hearing began,
Trump tweeted “NEVER
TRUMPERS” in apparent refer-
ence to government employees
Taylor and Kent. During the hear-
ing, Trump retweeted Republican
lawmakers who mocked the “star
witness” as a know-nothing.
“Ambassador Taylor, are you a
‘never-Trumper?’ ” asked Rep.
Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)
“No, sir,” Taylor replied.
[email protected]
[email protected]Taylor unflappable as GOP aims to make him the inquiry’s ‘star witness’
Acting envoy to Ukraine
calmly lays out concerns
over demands for probesMATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state, seated second from left, and acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr.,
seated second from right, appear for a House Intelligence Committee hearing on impeachment Wednesday on Capitol Hill.BY SHANE HARRIS
AND JOHN HUDSON
George Kent, the State Depart-
ment’s foremost expert on
Ukraine, seemed destined for a
supporting role in Wednesday’s
impeachment hearings — more
memorable for his matching
blue-and-yellow bow tie and
pocket square than any news-
worthy moments.
But after initial rounds of
questions from Republican and
Democratic counsels, which were
mostly directed at William B.
Taylor Jr., the senior U.S. diplo-
mat in Ukraine, Kent emerged as
a forceful debunker of some of
the most frequently cited asser-
tions and conspiracy theories
among President Trump’s allies.
Under questioning from Dem-
ocrats, Kent said there was “no
factual basis” of allegations that
Ukraine intervened in the 2016
election, something that Trump
asked Ukrainian President Vo-
lodymyr Zelensky to investigate
when he brought up the comput-
er security company CrowdStrike
in the leaders’ July 25 phone call.
“I think it’s amply clear that
Russian interference was at the
heart of the interference in the
2016 election cycle,” Kent said,
echoing the assessment of every
U.S. intelligence agency, and every
Trump-appointed head of those
agencies.
Kent’s rejection of the notion
that Ukraine intervened in the
U.S. election to oppose Trump
appeared to frustrate the top
lawyer for the Republicans, Ste-
phen R. Castor, who eventually
stopped asking Kent about it.
“Ambassador Kent, you didn’t
seem to be too concerned about it
in the last round of questioning,
so I’ll just skip you,” Castor said.
Kent also dispelled some less-
er-known theories and talking
points taken up by Trump’s de-
fenders.
For instance, Democrats asked
him to comment on the claim by
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that
Trump’s threat to withhold aid to
Ukraine was “exactly” the same
tactic used by then-Vice Presi-
dent Biden when he threatened
to withhold aid if Ukrainian
prosecutor general Viktor Shokin
wasn’t fired.
“I do not think they are theconflict of interest.” Kent said he
did not receive a response.
And Kent testified, “I did not
witness any efforts by any U.S.
official to shield Burisma from
scrutiny. In fact, I and other U.S.
officials consistently advocated
reinstituting a scuttled investiga-
tion of [Mykola] Zlochevsky, Bu-
risma’s founder, as well as hold-
ing the corrupt prosecutors who
closed the case to account.”
In his closed-door deposition
last month, Kent also expressed
concerns about rampant corrup-
tion in Ukraine’s government
and business community. Before
serving at the embassy in Kyiv,
Kent was the senior anti-corrup-
tion coordinator in the State
Department’s European Bureau.
“If you took the roster of the
richest Ukrainians, they didn’t
build value, they largely stole it,”
Kent told lawmakers in October.
“Most of the billionaires in the
country became billionaires be-
cause they acquired state assets
for largely undervalued prices
and engaged in predatory com-
petition.”
Kent, a Harvard-educated dip-
lomat whose wife is of Crimean-
Tatar ancestry, is known for hav-
ing a passion for Ukraine and a
scholarly interest in world af-
fairs. He played the role of histo-
ry professor. In his opening state-
ment, he compared U.S. military
support of Ukraine to foreign
support of another fledgling, rev-
olutionary republic.
“Our 18th-century indepen-
dence,” he said, referring to the
post-colonial United States,
“would not have been secured
without the choice of European
officers — the French-born Lafay-
ette and Rochambeau, the Ger-
man-born von Steuben, and the
Poles Pulaski and Kosciuszko —
to come to the New World and
fight for our cause of freedom,
and the birth of a new country
free from imperial dominion.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Ukraine expert rejects conspiracy theories cited by president’s defenders
Russia clearly at heart
of election interference,
Kent testifiesMATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
The State Department’s George Kent returns from a break during House proceedings. Last month, Kent expressed his concerns about
corruption in Ukraine to lawmakers: “If you took the roster of the richest Ukrainians, they didn’t build value, they largely stole it,” he said.