George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testifies at the first public hearing in the Trump impeachment inquiry
WASHINGTON - The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, in the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, on Wednesday linked the president more directly to a pressure campaign on Ukraine to conduct investigations that would benefit him politically.
Taylor said a member of his staff overheard a July 26 phone call between Trump and Gordon Sondland, a former political donor appointed as a senior diplomat, in which the Republican president asked about those investigations and Sondland told him that the Ukrainians were ready to proceed. Republican lawmakers called Taylor’s account hearsay and noted that Ukraine’s president has not said he felt pressured by Trump.
“The questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether President Trump sought to exploit that ally’s vulnerability and invite Ukraine’s interference in our elections,” Schiff said in his opening statement. Nunes accused the Democrats of conducting a “carefully orchestrated smear campaign” using “a horrifically one-sided process” and accused “Democrats, the corrupt media and partisan bureaucrats” of trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election won by Trump.
“I do not believe the United States should ask other countries to engage in selective, politically associated investigations or prosecutions against opponents of those in power, because such selective actions undermine the rule of law regardless of the country,” Kent said. Taylor testified that Trump “had a feeling of having been wronged by the Ukrainians” and the investigations were “something that he thought they owed him.”
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