The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent was asked by a member of Congress whether it is “appropriate for the President of the United States in the context of an ally seeking military support, to ask that ally to investigate his political rival.” 

Here’s how Kent responded:

He continued: “As a general principle, I don’t think that as a matter of policy the U.S. should do that period, because I have spent much of my career trying to improve the rule of law. And in countries like Ukraine and Georgia, both of which want to join NATO, both of which have enjoyed billions of dollars of assistance from Congress, there is an outstanding issue about people in office in whose countries using selectively politically motivated prosecutions to go after their opponents. And that’s wrong for the rule of law regardless of what country that happens.”

Kent said a request by the President of the United States to have a foreign entity investigate his political rival would not align with US policy. 

“I would say that request does not align with what has been our policy towards Ukraine and may other countries,” he said. 

Former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker

Senior State Department official George Kent described to lawmakers a pivotal conversation between former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, diplomat Bill Taylor and the Ukrainian president’s top aide Andriy Yermak on Sept. 14.

Volker didn’t allow Kent to participate in this meeting, but Kent got a readout from Taylor the next morning. 

The meeting featured an “awkward conversation” where Volker told Yermak that he thought it would be inappropriate for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration to investigate former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

“And then Andriy Yermak said: What? You mean the type of investigations you’re pushing for us to do on Biden and Clinton?” Kent told lawmakers, retelling what he heard from Taylor’s readout.

Volker did not respond to that, Kent said. But later, the conversation touched on the quid pro quo.

The “message that we discussed before,” Kent said, was understood to be a public announcement by Zelensky that he was investigating Burisma, former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and the hacking of Democratic National Committee’s server.

One possibility was that it would take place in a CNN interview during the UN General Assembly in New York City. Zelensky never gave that interview.

Career diplomat George Kent testified that on Feb. 11, 2019, he was told by Ukraine’s minister of Interior, Arsen Avakov, that former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko had made a private trip to New York to meet with President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. 

When Kent asked what the purpose of the meeting was, Avakov responded: “To throw mud,” according to the transcript.

Kent said he asked: “To throw mud a whom?” and Avakov replied, “Towards Masha, towards you, towards others.” 

Avakov clarified that he was referring to former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch mentioning her by name, according to Kent’s testimony. 

Career diplomat George Kent said during his deposition that he “had concerns that there was an effort to initiate politically motivated prosecutions that were injurious to the rule of law.” 

“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 in Ukraine and the U.S,” Kent said, adding, “I informed the senior official still present and the European Bureau at 7:30 on a Friday night in the middle of the summer, which was Michael Murphy, and informed him of my intent to write a note to the file, which he agreed was the right thing to do.” 

Kent was asked if he was referring specifically to investigations referenced in the July 25 call record between President Trump and the Ukrainian president.

He responded:

George Kent, a career diplomat, described attending an event called the Ukraine Reform Conference, saying that he and Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy for Ukraine, were the ranking US officials who attended and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also attended along with senior aides, according to a transcript of Kent’s closed-door deposition.

During that time, Kent said, “Ambassador Volker told me that he would need to have a private meeting separately with the President, that he would pull him aside. And he explained to me that the purpose of that private conversation was to underscore the importance of the messaging that Zelensky needed to provide to President Trump about his willingness to be cooperative.” 

Kent then described how Volker “went around to the Ukrainian side of the table and pulled Zelensky, his chief of staff, Bohdan, and the translator,” saying, “Volker had several minutes with Zelensky, his chief of staff and the interpreter.” 

When Kent was asked if what the cooperation was referring to, he replied, “the details at that point were not clear to me. I would say that Kurt Volker had not provided additional details. It was more that President Zelensky needed to be signaling something in his cooperative attitude towards something the President was interested in.” 

Kent is then asked why Volker wanted to convey this “in a private pull-aside meeting rather than with everything there,” to which Kent says, “it was clear that he both wanted to restrict knowledge of it, and considered the matter sensitive.” He added, “What I was aware of what that there was an interest, and Kurt was sending a signal of a desire to have Zelensky be cooperative, but I did not know the details of what the ask was on that date, July 2.”

Career diplomat George Kent was asked if he is aware of “any discussions of a perceived conflict of interest on the part of either Hunter Biden or the Vice President” referring to Joe Biden. 

In response to a Republican staffer’s question, Kent recounted in 2015 being on “a call with somebody on the Vice President’s staff,” though he says he can’t recall who, when he raised concerns he heard “that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the US Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest.”  

Kent continued: “The message that I recall hearing back was that the Vice President’s son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family related issues at that time.”

“That was the end of that conversation,” he added.

Kent was asked if that took place in mid-2015, to which he responds, “That would have been in February, because to the best of my recollection Beau Biden died that spring. I then returned to Ukraine in August of 2015 and I believe he passed before then. So the only time that conversation could have happened is in that narrow window between January, February, 2015.”  

The diplomat was then asked, “did you ever think through with other State Department officials about maybe we should try to get Hunter Biden to leave the board or maybe we should get the Vice President to transition his key responsibilities on Ukraine to some other senior US official?”  

He responded, “No. It’s easy in a conference room like this to have a considered discussion about things. In Ukraine at that time, we had a war with Russian occupation, we had an embassy staff going from 150 Americans to 250 Americans, from no Special Force US Government soldiers to close to 70 in country, our assistance went from $130 million to nearly a billion. And we were working nearly nonstop. Ambassador Pyatt, I can tell you from working for him, would wake up between 4:58 and 5:01, because that was when I got the first email from him, and went to bed between 12:59 and 1:01, because that’s when I would get the last email. He had an internal clock. He only slept 4 hours. And it was nonstop. 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.” 

More context here: CNN previously reported that a spokesman for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign defended the former vice president’s conduct in Ukraine in a statement last month after reports emerged that Kent told congressional investigators that he had voiced concerns in early 2015 about Hunter Biden working for a Ukrainian natural gas company.  

Senior State Department official George Kent said he believes there was a quid pro quo, with President Trump’s appointees using a White House invitation to press the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump’s political rivals.

But Kent testified that he didn’t think US military assistance for Ukraine was associated with the quid pro quo.

Kent hedged that this is just his “personal opinion” of the matter. But it is an informed opinion – as a senior official, Kent was privy to many internal details about the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine.

George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, testified that on Oct. 3, he raised concerns about delays in responding to the committee’s subpoena during a meeting with State Department officials, according to the transcript released today.

Kent also told House lawmakers that he had a “very public exchange” with a State Department lawyer.

During that exchange, Kent argued that Assistant Secretary Carl Risch should be responsive to the subpoena, even though his name was not included on it, because he had spoken with Rudy Giuliani several times in January 2019 about getting a visa for former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, according to the transcript. 

Shokin was “well and very unfavorably known” to the State Department, but Kent learned in January 2019 that Giuliani had been in touch with the State Department regarding the denial of his US visa and even attempted to call the White House as part of that effort.

Ultimately, Kent testified that Giuliani was unsuccessful in securing a via for Shokin.

The lawyer disagreed with Kent’s assertion about Risch needing to respond to the subpoena. Kent documented the “tense” exchange in a memo filed with the State Department.

Diplomat George Kent said US military assistance to Ukraine was “critically important” to Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

The Trump administration temporarily froze that aid for no apparent reason over the summer, Kent testified.

Kent explained: “I would assess that they are critically important. The Ukrainian defense establishment was unprepared to fight a war with Russia when Russia began its war in 2014. And therefore, the training that we do, which is probably the most valuable in training Ukrainians to fight, as well as the equipping that we do, have been critical to the success of the Ukrainian armed forces in defending their country.”

Interestingly, Kent then added that “we probably derive more benefit from the relationship than the Ukrainians do” — but said he would only be willing to explain his assessment in a classified session.

Career diplomat George Kent told congressional investigators that the statement issued by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming House Committees were intimidating State Department officials was false, and that it was the State Department that was doing so. 

Kent testified that he raised the inaccuracy during a conversation with a member of the State Department’s legal office who helped draft Pompeo’s Oct. 1 statement accusing the committees of attempting to “bully” officials asked to testify in the impeachment proceedings. 

“I said somebody provided information to the Secretary that he said publicly in Italy that the congressional committees were preventing me from talking to legal counsel. And I said I’ve got 15 witnesses in a room hearing you say that you don’t want to talk to me. So I’m worried that you as working for this office, are adopting positions at odds with the language that your office is providing the Secretary of State,” he added. “My interest in this process was so that the State Department and the secretary would be protected, and being fully responsive to the legal subpoena that had been issued.”

The chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees responded to Pompeo’s Oct. 1 letter just hours later, saying that “any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress – including State Department employees – is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry.”