WASHINGTON (AP) – A former White House national security official says his boss told him to “tell the lawyers” about two worrisome conversations in which a diplomat told him about blocking military aid to Ukraine.
Tim Morrison testified at Tuesday’s House impeachment hearing about two September exchanges with Gordon Sondland.
Sondland is an envoy overseeing European Union policy who was also helping shape U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Morrison says Sondland said he’d told a Ukrainian official that his government would have to announce investigations into President Donald Trump’s Democratic political foes to free up the U.S. military assistance.
Morrison says Sondland also told him there was no “quid pro quo,” but that Ukraine needed to announce those investigations to get the aid.
Morrison says his boss, then White House national security adviser John Bolton, told him to tell their lawyers about Sondland’s remarks.
Former U.S. special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker is testifying in the impeachment inquiry that President Donald Trump told him he should talk to his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani about the new Ukrainian president. But he “didn’t take it as an instruction.”
The exchange with Trump happened soon after Volker and other officials returned to Washington from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May. Volker and others spoke highly of Zelenskiy and urged Trump to host him for a White House meeting.
But Trump pushed back and said the diplomats should talk to Giuliani.
Volker recalled that Trump said he hears “terrible things” about Zelenskiy and he should talk to Giuliani.
Volker testified that he “understood from that context that that’s where he hears it from” and he “didn’t take it as an instruction.”
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is telling Congress that the “favor” that President Donald Trump requested from the president of Ukraine on a July call was more than just a request.
Vindman testified in the House impeachment hearing Tuesday that in his military culture, a request is considered an order when a superior asks you to do something.
Republicans challenged that thinking, implying that Trump was not demanding that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy do the investigations on the phone call. Trump asked for the investigations as the U.S. withheld military aid for the country.
Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah said “the two people who were speaking to each other didn’t interpret this as a demand.”
Vindman said the context of the call “made it clear that this was not simply a request.”
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