[Senior state department official George Kent says the president
had a very specific demand for his Ukrainian counterpart, to be
delivered at a press conference] [[link removed]]

THREE WORDS TRUMP WANTED: "BIDEN," "CLINTON," "INVESTIGATION"  
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Tom McCarthy
November 7, 2019
The Guardian
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_ Senior state department official George Kent says the president had
a very specific demand for his Ukrainian counterpart, to be delivered
at a press conference _

,

 

Donald Trump wanted to hear three words out of the Ukrainian
president’s mouth, according to newly released testimony
[[link removed]] in
the US impeachment inquiry
[[link removed]]:
“investigations”, “Biden” and “Clinton”.

The Ukrainians had been told that the resumption of $400m in military
aid “would likely not occur” until President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
[[link removed]] made a
televised statement, according to previous testimony
[[link removed]].

The essential elements of the statement were dictated to diplomats by
Trump himself, testified George P Kent, a deputy assistant secretary
of state who was in charge of Ukraine
[[link removed]] policy – until he
abruptly was not.

Trump told Zelenskiy on the phone in late July that he wanted him to
pursue investigations of his political rival Joe Biden
[[link removed]] and a 2016
[[link removed]] election
conspiracy theory, according to a call summary released by the White
House.

But by early September, after a creep down what another witness has
described as a “continuum” of “insidiousness”, the demand had
grown more specific.

Gordon Sondland
[[link removed]],
the ambassador to the European Union, told fellow diplomats at the
time that “he, Gordon, had talked to the President – POTUS in sort
of shorthand – and POTUS wanted nothing less than President
Zelenskiy to go to a microphone and say ‘investigations’,
‘Biden’, and ‘Clinton’,” Kent testified, according to the
new transcripts.

“Clinton” was shorthand for the investigation of a conspiracy
theory, credited by Trump, about the 2016 election and his
opponent, Hillary Clinton
[[link removed]].

Allegations that Trump used the power of his office to solicit foreign
interference in the 2020
[[link removed]] election are
at the heart
[[link removed]] of
the current impeachment inquiry against him.

Thinking the plot was “injurious to the rule of law”, Kent took
measures to document conversations and other observations in
mid-August, a month after the military aid was suspended, he
testified.

“I wrote a note to the file saying that I had concerns that there
was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were
injurious to the rule of law, both Ukraine
[[link removed]] and the US,” he said.

“I do not believe the US should ask other countries to engage in
politically associated investigations and prosecutions,” he
continued. “As a general principle, I don’t think that as a matter
of policy the US should do that, period.”

Kent, a 27-year veteran of the foreign service, is scheduled to be the
second witness to speak in public impeachment hearings to begin
[[link removed]] next
week.

In his closed-door testimony he described his shock at the hijacking
of US policy in the region and his alarm to see Marie Yovanovitch
[[link removed]],
then ambassador to Ukraine, come under attack
[[link removed]] by
“two snake pits” – one in Ukraine and one in the United States.

Yovanovitch, who was recalled in May, fell victim to a runaway plot
that began with a former Ukrainian general prosecutor who wanted
“revenge” for her anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, working
with Rudy Giuliani
[[link removed]], Trump’s personal
emissary, Kent testified. The plot grew to take in Donald Trump Jr
[[link removed]]; Lev Parnas and
Igor Fruman
[[link removed]],
Ukrainian-Americans arrested last month on campaign finance charges;
and others, Kent said.

“My reference to the snake pits would have been in the context of
having had our ambassador just removed through actions by corrupt
Ukrainians in Ukraine as well as private American citizens back
here,” Kent explained.

“Mr Giuliani, at that point, had been carrying on a campaign for
several months full of lies and incorrect information about Ambassador
Yovanovitch, so this was a continuation of his campaign of lies,”
Kent said.

Diplomats nevertheless decided to work with Giuliani, the ex-mayor of
New York, owing to his link to Trump, Kent said. “It was clear that
the former mayor had influence on the President in terms of the way
the President thought of Ukraine,” Kent said, quoting America’s
special Ukraine envoy, Kurt Volker
[[link removed]].
“And I think by that moment in time, that was self-evident to anyone
who was working on the issues, and therefore, it made sense to try to
engage the mayor.”

But as his frustration at what he saw as the subversion of US policy
grew, Kent began to take additional counter-action, some of it
directed at his boss, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo
[[link removed]].

After Pompeo sent what Kent thought was an inaccurate letter accusing
Congress of attempting to bully career foreign service officers, Kent
notified top state department lawyers and the director of the foreign
service that what Pompeo said was wrong, he said.

“I was one of two career foreign service officers which had received
letters from the committees, and I had not felt bullied, threatened,
and intimidated,” Kent said.

Supervisors ultimately told Kent to temper his objections to the
scrambling of Ukraine policy, he said.

“I was told to keep my head down,” he said, “and lower my
profile in Ukraine.”

_Tom McCarthy is national affairs correspondent for Guardian US.
Twitter @teemcsee [[link removed]]. Click here
[[link removed]] for
Tom's public key_

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