WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Monday that he will "strongly consider" testifying in writing as part of the impeachment inquiry, at the outset of a week in which nine current or former officials are scheduled to publicly testify about his actions regarding Ukraine.
In morning tweets, Trump said he might take up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on a suggestion she made over the weekend. Trump also argued that the rules of the inquiry had been "rigged" by Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Among the witnesses testifying this week is Gordon Sondland, the U.S.' ambassador to the European Union. The witnesses all are testifying under penalty of perjury, and Sondland already has amended his earlier account amid contradicting testimony from other current or former U.S. officials. White House insiders, including an Army officer and National Security Council aide, will launch the week's hearings today.
Congressional Democrats reacted with skepticism to Trump's statement about testifying, and they called for more cooperation from the White House.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said in a tweet that the president should testify and allow the testimony of other officials, arguing that Trump was engaged in an "illegal coverup."
"He should allow Rick Perry and John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani to testify," Beyer tweeted, referring to the energy secretary, former national security adviser and the president's personal lawyer. "He should turn over the documents Congress subpoenaed. He should end his illegal coverup. I'm not holding my breath."
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., a staunch Trump ally, said it would be beneath the president to provide testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
"It would be a 'heck no' from me as far as whether or not he should testify," Zeldin said during an interview on Fox News.
Today's sessions from the House Intelligence Committee will start with Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer at the National Security Council, and with Jennifer Williams, an aide in Vice President Mike Pence's office.
Both are foreign policy experts who listened as Trump spoke on July 25 with the newly elected Ukrainian president. A government whistleblower's complaint about that call led the House to launch the impeachment investigation.
Vindman and Williams say they were uneasy as Trump talked to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about investigations of potential 2020 political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Vindman said he reported the call to National Security Council lawyers. Williams said she found it "unusual" and inserted the White House's readout of the call into Pence's briefing book.
"I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen," Vindman said previously in private testimony. He said there was "no doubt" what Trump wanted.
Vindman also lodged concerns about Sondland. Vindman relayed details from a July 10 meeting at the White House in which, he said, the ambassador pushed visiting Ukraine officials for the investigations Trump wanted.
"[Sondland] was talking about the 2016 elections and an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma," Vindman testified, referring to the gas company in Ukraine where Hunter Biden served on the board.
Burisma is what Tim Morrison, a former official at the National Security Council who will testify later today, referred to as a "bucket of issues" -- the Bidens, Democrats, investigations -- that he had tried to "stay away" from.
Along with former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, their accounts further complicate Sondland's testimony and characterize Trump as more central to the action.
Sondland met with a Zelenskiy aide on the sidelines of a Sept. 1 gathering in Warsaw, according to Morrison, who said he was watching the encounter from across the room. Morrison testified that the ambassador told him moments later that he pushed the Ukrainian for the Burisma investigation as a way for Ukraine to gain access to military funds that had been withheld by the Trump administration.
Volker provided investigators with a series of text messages with Sondland and another diplomat, William Taylor, the charge d'affaires in Ukraine, who grew alarmed at the linkage of the investigations to the aid.
SENATORS' ROLES
Republicans have complained that witnesses are offering only hearsay, without firsthand knowledge of Trump's actions. But as more witnesses come forward with testimony closer to Trump, the GOP now says the president is innocent because the military money was eventually released.
House Republicans asked to hear from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has firsthand knowledge of some of the meetings in question.
Johnson, a member of the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus, traveled to Ukraine as part of a delegation attending Zelenskiy's inauguration earlier this year, and he joined phone calls between Trump and Sondland.
Typically a staunch defender of the president, Johnson has said that he confronted Trump in a phone call in late August about allegations that the president was engaging in a quid pro quo with Ukraine tying a nearly $400 million package of security assistance to a public commitment for Ukrainian investigations that Trump wanted. The president, Johnson has said, flatly denied it.
But the senator has also revealed information that could be damaging to Trump: that Sondland told him that the aid to Ukraine was, in fact, tied to Trump's request to have Kyiv investigate Democrats. Johnson told reporters at an event in Wisconsin that he had tried to get permission from Trump to tell Ukraine's president that U.S. aid was on its way in the wake of those allegations, but that the president refused.
Meanwhile, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, disputed an account from Morrison that he attended a White House meeting Sept. 11 at which Trump was urged to release the Ukraine military aid. Portman's office said the senator phoned in to the session.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, during an appearance Monday in Louisville, Ky., acknowledged the House will likely vote to impeach the president.
But the GOP leader said he "can't imagine" a scenario in which there is enough support in the Senate -- a supermajority of 67 votes -- to remove Trump from office.
McConnell said House Democrats "are seized with 'Trump derangement syndrome,'" a phrase used by the president's supporters. He said the inquiry seems "particularly ridiculous since we're going into the presidential election and the American people will have an opportunity in the very near future to decide who they want the next president to be."
Republicans also reiterated their complaint that public hearings are being held before all deposition transcripts have been released, arguing that Democrats are withholding information from the public.
Democrats are giving witnesses a chance to review transcripts of their closed testimony before releasing them publicly.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., suggested Democrats don't want Americans to view all of the information.
"Not being discussed enough: House Democrats are holding public impeachment hearings when critical depositions haven't been released -- some that include key exculpatory information for the President," he tweeted. "Perhaps it's because they're not interested in you seeing the full set of facts."
Pelosi has said the president could speak for himself.
"If he has information that is exculpatory ... then we look forward to seeing it," she said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS. Trump "could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants," she said.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump "should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath." He said the White House's insistence on blocking witnesses from cooperating raises the question: "What is he hiding?"
The White House has instructed officials not to appear, and most have received congressional subpoenas to compel their testimony.
Those appearing for public testimony have already given private interviews to investigators, and transcripts from those depositions have largely been released.
Sondland is to appear for public testimony Wednesday.
Besides Sondland, the committee will hear on Wednesday from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, and David Hale, a State Department official. On Thursday, Fiona Hill, a former top National Security Council staff member for Europe and Russia, will appear.
David Holmes, a State Department official who said he overheard Trump talking about the investigations on a phone call with Sondland while the ambassador was at a restaurant in Kyiv, was a late addition Monday. He is scheduled to close out the week of testimony on Thursday.
Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Hope Yen and Bruce Schreiner of The Associated Press; by Catie Edmondson of The New York Times; and by Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner, Brittany Shammas and Seung Min Kim of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/19/2019