Ex-Envoy to Testify He Didn't Know Ukraine Aid Was Tied to Investigations
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — Kurt D. Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, plans to tell lawmakers on Tuesday that he was out of the loop at key moments during President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to turn up damaging information about Democrats, according to an account of his prepared testimony.
As the House Intelligence Committee opens its second week of public impeachment hearings, Mr. Volker will say that he did not realize that others working for Mr. Trump were tying American security aid to a commitment to investigate Democrats. His testimony, summarized by a person informed about it who insisted on anonymity to describe it in advance, will seek to reconcile his previous closed-door description of events with conflicting versions offered subsequently by other witnesses.
Mr. Volker will be one of four witnesses appearing before the committee on Tuesday as it ramps up its investigation into the president’s effort to extract domestic political help from a foreign power while holding up $391 million in American security aid. The committee, which already had eight witnesses set for this week, added a ninth on Monday by calling David Holmes, a senior American Embassy official in Ukraine who overheard a conversation in which Mr. Trump asked about whether Ukraine was going to agree to carry out the investigations he wanted.
Mr. Trump, who remained out of public sight on Monday for the third straight day, wrote on Twitter that he would “strongly consider” testifying in the impeachment inquiry, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised the idea during a weekend television interview.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/us/politics/trump-impeachment.html
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