Trump call scandal .. US envoy resigns to Ukraine

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Trump call scandal .. US envoy resigns to Ukraine

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[rtl]Release date:: 9/29/2019 9:42 • 81 times read[/rtl]

[rtl]Trump scandal with Ukrainian president topples first victim[/rtl]

Kurt Volker, Trump’s Envoy for Ukraine, Resigns




Peter Baker








WASHINGTON — Kurt D. Volker, the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine who got caught in the middle of the pressure campaign by President Trump and his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to find damaging information about Democrats, abruptly resigned his post on Friday.
Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Kurt Volker, the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine, resigned on Friday.
Mr. Volker, who told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday that he was stepping down, offered no public explanation but a person informed about his decision said he concluded that it was impossible to be effective in his assignment given the developments of recent days.



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His departure was the first resignation since revelations about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats. The disclosures have triggered a full-blown House impeachment inquiry, and House leaders announced on Friday that they planned to interview Mr. Volker in a deposition next week.

Mr. Volker, a former ambassador to NATO who served in the part-time, unpaid position of special envoy to help Ukraine resolve its armed confrontation with Russian-sponsored separatists, was among the government officials who found themselves in an awkward position because of the search for dirt on Democrats, reluctant to cross the president or Mr. Giuliani yet wary of getting drawn into politics outside their purview.

The unidentified intelligence official who filed the whistle-blower complaint that brought the president’s actions to light identified Mr. Volker as one of the officials trying to “contain the damage” by advising Ukrainians how to navigate Mr. Giuliani’s campaign.

Mr. Volker facilitated an entree for Mr. Giuliani with the newly elected government in Ukraine, acting not at the instruction of Mr. Trump or Mr. Pompeo but at the request of the Ukrainians who were worried that Mr. Giuliani was making the rounds seeking information about Mr. Biden and other Democrats.

The Ukrainians were concerned about the impact of their relationship with the United States, their most important patron against Russia. Andriy Yermak, a close aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, asked Mr. Volker in July to connect him with Mr. Giuliani so the Ukrainian government could hear out his issues. Mr. Volker agreed to reach out to the former mayor to see if he would sit down with the Ukrainian official.

Mr. Volker then contacted Mr. Giuliani to ask if he would want to speak with Mr. Yermak and the mayor agreed. Mr. Volker and Mr. Giuliani had breakfast to discuss Ukraine.

“Mr. Mayor — really enjoyed breakfast this morning,” Mr. Volker wrote in a text later that day that Mr. Giuliani posted on Twitter this week. Mr. Volker set up a conference call between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Yermak, who then later also met in person in Madrid on Aug. 2.

Mr. Giuliani has seized on Mr. Volker’s call to him to assert that he was acting at the behest of the State Department. He said he spoke with Mr. Volker eight times and displayed the text messages on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News on Thursday night, calling on Mr. Volker to confirm that the department initiated contact.

“He should step forward and explain what he did,” Mr. Giuliani said on the show. “The whistle-blower falsely alleges that I was operating on my own. Well, I wasn’t operating on my own!”

Referring to Mr. Volker and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, Mr. Giuliani added: “They basically knew everything I was doing. So, it was being done with the authorization and at the request — and then I have a final one in which they — there is a big ‘thank you’ about how my honest and straightforward discussion led to solving a problem in the relationship.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Volker’s resignation on Friday, nor did it leap to his defense after The New York Times first reported on his role in facilitating Mr. Giuliani’s talks with the new Ukrainian government.

In a statement last month in response to that story, a department spokesperson said that Mr. Volker “has confirmed that, at Presidential Advisor Andriy Yermak’s request, Volker put Yermak in direct contact with Mr. Giuliani.” The statement went on to stress that Mr. Giuliani “is a private citizen and acts in a personal capacity as a lawyer for President Trump. He does not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government.”

Just days after Mr. Giuliani’s breakfast with Mr. Volker and the follow-up phone call with Mr. Yermak, Mr. Trump spoke on the telephone with Mr. Zelensky. After the Ukrainian president described his need for more American assistance against Russia, Mr. Trump asked him “to do us a favor, though,” and look into Democrats.

Mr. Volker was not on that call and was neither shown a copy of the transcript reconstructed from the conversation nor told that the president mentioned Mr. Biden, according to one person informed about the series of events. Mr. Volker participated in Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Zelensky on the sideline of the United Nations this week in his last official duty.

Mr. Volker, a former career foreign service officer who represented President George W. Bush at NATO and now serves as executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University based in Washington, spent much of the year trying to bring Mr. Trump together with Mr. Zelensky to bolster the government elected earlier this year.

He argued to Trump administration officials that Mr. Zelensky was a credible reformer and serious figure who could be his country’s last chance to get its act together in the face of Russian aggression. With Mr. Trump openly expressing his disdain for Ukrainians — convinced that they were all corrupt and tried to take him down in 2016 — it was an uphill task.

After the Ukrainian inauguration, Mr. Trump agreed to meet with Mr. Zelensky but his staff kept delaying putting a date on the calendar. Like other officials, Mr. Volker was surprised to learn that Mr. Trump had ordered $391 million in aid to Ukraine frozen.

But he kept working to bring the two presidents together. Finally, the White House agreed to schedule a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky during the American president’s visit to Warsaw, only to scratch the meeting when Mr. Trump decided to stay home to monitor a hurricane.

Instead, Vice President Mike Pence, whose trip to Mr. Zelensky’s inauguration had been canceled to increase leverage on the Ukrainian government, according to the whistle-blower complaint, was sent to meet with Mr. Zelensky in Warsaw in his place.

Mr. Volker’s departure, which was first reported by the State Press, the student newspaper at Arizona State University, leaves the Trump administration with few senior officials versed in Ukraine’s struggles with Russia.

In recent months, the administration has lost John R. Bolton, the national security adviser; Fiona Hill, the top Europe official on the National Security Council staff; and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, all of whom sympathized with Ukraine in its struggle with Russia.

Moreover, the United States Embassy in Kiev is still without an ambassador after the administration yanked home Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who was targeted by the president and Mr. Giuliani for obstensibly being insufficiently loyal, a charge heatedly disputed by her colleagues.

Kenneth Vogel contributed to this report.




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Ukrainian lawmakers seek new probes into allegations at ‘epicenter’ of U.S. political battles




Michael Birnbaum, David L. Stern
7 hrs ago











KIEV, Ukraine —Lawmakers in Ukraine are seeking to launch probes into some of the same allegations at the heart of the Trump administration’s dirt-digging efforts, including possibly reopening inquiries into the Ukrainian natural gas firm with connections to Hunter Biden.



The Ukraine push, however, could draw the country deeper into Washington’s whistleblower battles even as President Volodymyr Zelensky tries to thread a careful path with one of Ukraine’s most important allies.

A separate probe by Ukraine also has the potential to add sizzle to White House efforts to charge up President Trump’s base and lend legitimacy to his demands for Ukrainian prosecutors to look again at corruption allegations — despite no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.

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Those advocating the parliamentary investigations say they address any potential loose ends and try to defuse Ukraine’s potentially explosive role in the 2020 presidential election. But they also acknowledge that their effort could have the opposite effect and keep Ukraine in the middle of the impeachment debate in Washington. 

“I don’t like it that Ukraine, again and again, is in such tight, uncomfortable situations,” said Valentin Nalyvaichenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker who is leading the push for the parliamentary inquiry.

Nalyvaichenko — who was head of Ukraine’s top security agency, the State Security Organization, at the height of a conflict with pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 — said Ukraine might as well try to seize control of the narrative.

“Ukraine is already in the epicenter,” he said, “to put it mildly.”




Slideshow by Reuters


The whistleblower complaint made public Thursday alleges a wide-ranging effort by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to pressure Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden, and others. It details mounting concern by both men that Zelensky, a former comedian elected in April, might be unwilling to take part.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, said that Hunter Biden “did not violate” any Ukrainian laws during Lutsenko’s tenure from May 2016 until this past August.

But under Ukraine’s political rules, Trump and Giuliani may not need to go to the top to get what they want.

Ukrainian law allows parliament to start a formal inquiry if one-third of the 450-member legislature agrees. Nalyvaichenko, a newly elected member of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party, is now trying to gather enough signatures.

Even if Nalyvaichenko falls short, he said he would still press for regular parliamentary hearings. Those could involve alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and inquests into claims of money laundering and abuse by the gas company Burisma Holdings, whose board once included the younger Biden. He has not been accused by Ukrainian officials of wrongdoing.

In a sign that he knows the inquiry will not simply be of local interest, Nalyvaichenko said he would invite “Ukraine and international media” to cover it.

As the eastern Ukraine conflict erupted in 2014, Nalyvaichenko was in frequent contact with top U.S. policymakers, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry, and the State Department official then in charge of Russia and Ukraine, Victoria Nuland.

“Those years when Russian aggression started, they supported us,” he said.

He said that he had not consulted with anyone from Zelensky’s team or political party about the effort, although he said he hoped they joined in. Zelensky’s party controls a majority of the seats in parliament.
Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a session of the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev on Aug. 29, 2019.
Investigations into Burisma were left dormant or dropped by previous Ukrainian prosecutors. Giuliani has accused Joe Biden of pushing for the 2016 dismissal of Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to halt an ongoing inquiry into Burisma.

Joe Biden, however, said he was actually pushing for Shokin’s ouster because he was too soft on corruption, a view shared by many Western officials in Kiev. Both Joe and Hunter Biden have denied any improper action.

Nalyvaichenko said in both inquiries, lawmakers would focus on Ukrainian citizens potentially breaking Ukrainian laws. That would mean that the investigation would be unlikely to focus on the actions of either Biden.

Still, he said, in the case of Burisma, the inquiry would start at the top.

The inquiry will look at “Ukraine high-level officials, starting with ex-president Mr. [Petro] Poroshenko, his role and other officials in his administration or in the government, in this, in other corruption, all deals within the activity of this gas company,” Nalyvaichenko said.

Nalyvaichenko also said that he wanted to get to the bottom of a “black ledger” that appeared in August 2016, three months before the U.S. election, and appeared to detail illicit Ukrainian government payments made to Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman. Manafort was forced to step down shortly after the ledger surfaced.

Nalyvaichenko said he had always been puzzled that he never learned of the ledger while he was head of Ukraine’s security service. The ledger was supposedly recovered from the burned-out remains of former president Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions headquarters. He also said he wanted to study the actions of Ukrainian diplomats in Washington, whom he said may have favored Clinton.

Interference in foreign elections is also not against the law in Ukraine, although handling investigative evidence improperly could be.

“I would not like to see this as against anyone,” Nalyvaichenko said. “It’s potentially against political corruption in Ukraine.”

Among the witnesses he said he was interested in speaking to was Andrii Telizhenko, who served as a junior diplomat at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington at the time of the election and has been in contact with Giuliani.
Peter Foley/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock Rudolf W. Giuliani with President Trump at the clubhouse of Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster Township, N.J., in November 2016.
Unlike U.S. congressional investigations, Ukrainian parliamentary inquiries don’t possess the power to subpoena witnesses or otherwise compel testimony. They don’t have the resources to hire independent investigators.

Separately, one of the senior Ukrainian officials who has collaborated with Giuliani said he would welcome any request by U.S. authorities for him to investigate the cases.

“If the American justice system is interested in finding out what happened here three years ago, of course we will make this happen to the utmost,” said Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of Ukraine’s Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

“Something wasn’t right” in the sudden appearance of the black ledger that implicated Manafort, said Kholodnytsky, who met with Giuliani in Paris in May to discuss his concerns.

The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, pushed publicly for Kholodnytsky’s ouster this year after he was allegedly captured on tape advising potential witnesses how to avoid prosecution in corruption cases.

Giuliani, in turn, pushed for Yovanovitch’s removal, and she was ultimately recalled early from Ukraine.

“Like or dislike, we’re already on the agenda,” said Oleg Voloshyn, a lawmaker and former Foreign Ministry spokesman. “It’s better for us to be open and transparent, rather than put it in a suitcase and look like we’re selling it to Trump or Biden.”

michael.birnbaum@washpost.com



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Trump whistleblower complaint: Timeline of the allegations




Javier Zarracina and Jim Sergent, USA TODAY
3 hrs ago










In the whistleblower complaint that triggered the impeachment inquiry, the author describes a series of events – partly public and partly described by other officials – that culminated in a call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Provided by USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, Inc.
We've arranged those alleged events in chronological order – providing a clearer context to the call in which Trump pressed Zelensky to investigate 2016 election interference and the Biden family's Ukrainian business dealings.



December 2018: Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaks with Viktor Shokin, Ukraine's former prosecutor general.

January: Giuliani meets with Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's prosecutor general under President Petro Poroshenko, in New York.

February: Giuliani meets with Lutsenko a second time in Warsaw, Poland.

March: In a series of articles in The Hill, Lutsenko and other Ukrainian officials make claims about: 

• Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election, allegedly in collaboration with the Democratic National Committee.
  
• U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch obstructing Ukrainian investigation of such involvement.
  
• Former Vice President Joe Biden trying to protect his son's business with Ukraine.
  

April 21:  Zelensky defeats Poroshenko in Ukrainian presidential elections. Trump makes a brief congratulatory call to Zelensky.

April 25: In a Fox News interview, Trump describes Lutsenko's claims as "big" and "incredible" and says the attorney general "would want to see this."

April 29: U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch is recalled to Washington for "consultations."

May 6: The State Department announces Yovanovitch will end her assignment in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital.

May 9: The New York Times reports that Giuliani plans to travel to Ukraine to press the government to pursue investigations into election interference in 2016 and alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family.

May 10: Trump saysin an interview with Politico that he "plans to speak with Giuliani about the trip." Hours later, Giuliani cancels his trip because Zelensky was "surrounded by enemies of the [U.S.] president ... and of the United States."

May 11: Lutsenko meets with President-elect Zelensky and expresses his wish to remain prosecutor general in the new government.

May 14: Giuliani says in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist that the U.S. ambassador was "removed ... because she was part of the efforts against the president."

Around May 14:  Trump instructs Vice President Mike Pence to cancel his trip to Ukraine to attend Zelensky's inauguration.

June 13: Trump tells ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he "would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government."

June 21: Giuliani tweets, "New Pres. of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery of Pres Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Obama people."







July 18: An Office of Management and Budget official says Trump issued instructions to suspend U.S. aid to Ukraine.

July 25: Trump phones Zelensky to request that Ukraine investigate 2016 election interference and alleged corruption by the Biden family. Trump asks Zelensky to meet with Giuliani and Attorney General Barr for further discussions.

July 25 evening: A post on the Ukrainian president's website mentions the call: "Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian Government will be able to ... complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the U.S."

July 26: Senior White House officials intervene to "lock down" all records of the phone call and load the transcript into a separate electronic server, according to the whistleblower's complaint.

July 26: Kurt Volker, U.S. representative for Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, meet with Zelensky to provide advice.

August 2: Giuliani travels to Madrid to meet with a Zelensky adviser as a "follow-up" to the call.

Aug. 9: Trump says he thinks Zelensky "will be invited to the White House."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump whistleblower complaint: Timeline of the allegations

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