WASHINGTON -- George Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy, on Tuesday became the latest high-ranking witness to be questioned privately by House impeachment investigators, facing questions about his knowledge of the widening Ukraine scandal.
As Democratic leaders privately debated whether to hold a vote in the coming days to officially open an impeachment inquiry that they began three weeks ago, Kent sat with investigators despite being directed by the State Department not to do so, filling in crucial blanks in their account.
Kent raised concerns to colleagues early this year about the pressure being directed at Ukraine by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pursue investigations into Trump's political rivals, according to people familiar with Kent's warnings.
As far back as March, they said, Kent pointed to Giuliani's role in what he called a "disinformation" campaign intended to use a Ukrainian prosecutor to smear Trump's adversaries. Those included former Vice President Joe Biden; Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information during the 2016 campaign about Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
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The efforts in Ukraine are at the center of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry, which is based on the account of an intelligence official who filed a whistleblower complaint that alleged Trump abused his power to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election.
With lawmakers returning to the Capitol after a two-week recess, Democratic leaders planned to huddle with members of their caucus Tuesday evening to update them on their work and to discuss the possibility of holding a floor vote to authorize their inquiry.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far insisted that the move is unnecessary, but Republicans and the White House have said it is a prerequisite to lend fairness and legitimacy to the process. Democratic leaders were privately gauging support among swing-district Democrats for a possible vote, according to three officials familiar with the outreach.
Late Tuesday, Pelosi said she's not going to call for a formal House vote on impeachment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened the chamber Tuesday suggesting that Democrats were trying to "cancel out" Trump's election with the march toward impeachment.
Separately, the committees leading the investigation had set a series of deadlines Tuesday for key witnesses and executive branch agencies to hand over relevant documents.
Kent's appearance came after several administration witnesses, who were instructed not to comply with the impeachment inquiry in line with a White House declaration last week that there would be a "full halt" to any cooperation, ultimately agreed to do so. According to officials familiar with the investigation, the State Department directed Kent not to appear and sought to limit his testimony. The House Intelligence Committee then issued a last-minute subpoena ordering him to appear, and he complied.
Kent's warnings about the disinformation effort are reflected in internal State Department emails provided by the agency's inspector general to Congress this month and obtained by The New York Times. In one, he assailed a "fake news smear" being pushed against Yovanovitch by conservative media personalities allied with Trump. In another, he criticized the Ukrainian prosecutor who was pushing the claims about Yovanovitch and called them "complete poppycock."
Kent was the second-highest-ranking State Department official to testify in recent days. The first was Yovanovitch, whom Trump ordered removed from her ambassadorial post in May, but she is still a State Department employee. She answered questions from investigators Friday, offering a blistering assessment of the Trump administration's foreign policy and saying she had been told Trump pressed for her ouster for months based on "false claims" by outsiders working for their own personal and political objectives.
Fiona Hill, a former top White House Europe adviser, appeared Monday under subpoena as well, and other current and former officials are expected to follow suit. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to Europe who appears to be at the center of the alleged pressure campaign, is to meet investigators Thursday.
Michael McKinley, a former top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who resigned last week, is scheduled to testify today. McKinley, a career foreign service officer and Pompeo's de facto chief of staff, resigned Friday, ending a 37-year career.
BOLTON CONCERNS
In 10 hours of testimony Monday, Hill recounted that national security adviser John Bolton was so alarmed by Giuliani's back-channel activities in Ukraine that he described Giuliani as a "hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up."
The former White House aide detailed Bolton's concerns to lawmakers and told them that she had at least two meetings with National Security Council lawyer John Eisenberg about the matter at Bolton's request, according to a person familiar with the testimony who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential interview.
Hill, a top adviser on Russia, also discussed Sondland and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, the person said, telling the three committees leading the investigation that Bolton also told her he was not part of "whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up," an apparent reference to talks over Ukraine.
Giuliani said Tuesday that he was "very disappointed" in Bolton's comment. Bolton, Giuliani said, "has been called much worse."
Giuliani also acknowledged that he had received payments totaling $500,000 related to the work for a company operated by Lev Parnas who, along with associate Igor Fruman, played a key role in Giuliani's efforts to launch a Ukrainian corruption investigation against Biden and his son. The two men were arrested last week on campaign finance charges as they tried to board an international flight.
He said the cash was from legitimate sources, even though Parnas and Fruman are accused of moving similar amounts of cash from Russian or Ukrainian oligarchs to GOP politicians and other pro-Trump organizations.
"I know beyond any doubt the source of the money is not any questionable source," Giuliani told Reuters in an interview.
Giuliani's attorney, Jon Sale, notified lawmakers that Giuliani will not comply with a subpoena issued to appear before House investigators in the impeachment inquiry. Democrats set a deadline for today for Giuliani to provide documents.
Also Tuesday, a federal grand jury subpoenaed former Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions for information about his interactions with Giuliani as part of an ongoing investigation based in New York that includes an inquiry into Giuliani's business dealings, according to a person familiar with the probe. The person wasn't authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The former lawmaker from Texas is cooperating with investigators and will turn over documents in the coming weeks, said Matt Mackowiak, a spokesman for Sessions.
TRUMP REACTION
At the White House, Trump accused Democrats of "allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings," and said if Republicans tried to do the same thing "they would be excoriated by the Fake News."
"Let the facts come out from the charade of people, most of whom I do not know, they are interviewing for 9 hours each, not selective leaks," Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning.
Impeachment investigators thus far have been conducting their proceedings almost entirely in secret by holding staff-led witness depositions, or interviews, rather than public hearings. Republicans have seized on that approach as evidence that Democrats are trying to impeach the president out of public view.
But the tactic is not uncommon on Capitol Hill, at least in the early stages of an investigation. Senior House Democrats argue that conducting the interviews in private is a more efficient and effective form of fact-finding that avoids some of the spectacle of a public hearing and ensures that potential witnesses are not able to easily adjust their stories in ways that could mislead investigators.
House aides during Watergate did something similar before holding public hearings related to whether to impeach President Richard Nixon.
Democrats say they, too, plan to publicly present their findings when they have sorted out what happened.
Investigators were waiting to see if the Trump administration and key witnesses in the case would produce documents related to Trump's conversations with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine, the decision to withhold $391 million in security aid for Ukraine this summer, and other matters. Those already under subpoena to produce the material include the Office of Management and Budget, the Defense Department and Giuliani.
On Tuesday, a senior administration officials said the Office of Management and Budget had said it won't turn over the documents related to withholding military aid to Ukraine.
The official also indicated that acting budget director Russell Vought won't comply with the committees' request that he testify on Oct. 25. The official said the agency won't participate in a process the White House views as a sham.
Vice President Mike Pence also faces a deadline to hand over a vast set of records voluntarily, or face a subpoena.
Information for this article was contributed by Nicholas Fandos and Kenneth P. Vogel of The New York Times; by Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Laurie Kellman, Michael Balsamo, Eric Tucker, Matthew Lee, Padmananda Rama, Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram, Jonathan Lemire and Tom Hays of The Associated Press; by Billy House, Jack Fitzpatrick and Jordan Fabian of Bloomberg News; by John Wagner, Colby Itkowitz and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post; and by Dave Goldiner and Chris Sommerfeldt of the New York Daily News.
A Section on 10/16/2019