The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry

Ambassador David Hale described an April 25 meeting in which he and other State Department staff discussed how to move forward when it was made clear that President Trump had lost confidence in US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Hale said he didn’t know exactly how he learned Trump had lost confidence in Yovanovitch.

Since the decision didn’t come from below him, he said, “There are limited options, and the Secretary of State and the Counselor were obviously the people who were involved with this, I guess.” 

Hale said he and the staff organizing Yovanovitch’s exit plan were not given a reason as to why the President had lost confidence in Yovanovitch. 

Part of that meeting, Hale said, was to figure out a way that to handle Yovanovitch’s exit from the embassy which “limited the controversy” and “the damage that that might do to the Ambassador’s own reputation and to the State Department and to the embassy in Kyiv.”

“The focus of the conversation was that we were given a decision by the President that he had lost confidence in the Ambassador and our task was to implement that,” he said. 

Despite being tasked with Yovanovitch’s exit, Hale said he thought she was doing an “exceptional job” and did not know of anyone at the State Department calling for her ouster.

When a statement about Yovanovitch’s relief from her post in Kiev was announced, it included a line which indicated that she was exiting “as planned.”

Hale said he was traveling at the time, but was consulted for edits.

“So I looked at it, and I said, please delete the words ‘as planned.’ It’s too cute, and it’s not exactly accurate. It went out with those two words in it. I don’t know why,” Hale said. “My guess is that I was too late. You know, press guidance has to go. Sometimes you just have to get it out. And it just went forward without my input.”

Ambassador David Hale said that he wasn’t discouraged from testifying to House investigators.

“On the contrary,” he told the committee.

Hale continued:

Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy for Ukraine. He was the first witness to testify in the House impeachment inquiry.

David Holmes described his perception of Kurt Volker’s role changing over time, saying that at first “Ambassador Volker was someone we knew, largely trusted, and we thought we were pursing the same ends.”

But, he added:

Asked to expand on what he meant by that, Holmes said:

He added, “I believe Ambassador Volker had good intentions to try to achieve things he thought the Ukrainians needed, to try to achieve important things like peace. I believe that. I believe as the situation became increasingly clear that the investigations were the thing that was required for them to get the support they needed, you know, I can’t speak for Ambassador Volker, but that’s, in my view, again, advancing our understanding of our Ukraine policy veered into the Washington politics lane.”

President Trump was speaking so loudly into the telephone during a phone call with American Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland that Sondland “winced” and moved the phone away from his head, according to a US embassy official who witnessed it.

David Holmes told lawmakers last week that Sondland placed the call through a switchboard, and appeared impatient as he waited for Trump to get on the line.

When he did, the volume was so excessive that he appeared in pain.

Sondland “winced and then moved the phone away from his ear, because the volume was loud,” Holmes recalled in his testimony.

He said eventually the wincing ceased.

He said he was seated at a two-top directly across from Sondland in the Kiev restaurant where the phone call occurred.

“It was close enough we were sort of sharing an appetizer together,” he said.

When it became clear Trump and Sondland were discussing diplomatic issues — like Ukraine and the potential release of rapper A$AP Rocky — Holmes took notes of the conversation in the Notes app on his phone.

When he returned to the embassy, he was not shy in recounting what happened.

“I recall like, frankly, telling this story to almost anyone I encountered, because it was so remarkable,” he said.

The State Department did not recommend that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ambassador David Hale testified.

Hale said he only realized that Sondland was going when the White House announced the delegation that would be attending. 

While he testified that he only met Sondland “a few times,” he described a man who bragged about his access.

“He definitely wanted people to know that he had direct access to the President, and he would often invoke the President’s name for certain things he wanted and he was pursuing,” Hale said.

He added that none of it struck him as “problematic,” as Sondland was a “political appointee.”

Ambassador David Hale told House investigators that he recommended Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch deny the allegations made in a smear campaign against her and, “reaffirm her loyalty, as the Ambassador and foreign service officer, to the President of the United States and the Constitution.”

Along with that statement, Hale said he was “advocating strongly,” for a statement from the State Department in Yovanovitch’s defense.

He described writing a “very robust 10 full-page statement of defense and praise, actually, for the Ambassador’s work.”

“The concept was that simultaneously, or in coordination anyway, she would put out a statement. And they were debating in her embassy whether she should do it on camera or a written statement,” he said.

Hale said he didn’t know, “exactly who initiated that idea,” but it was one he supported. 

“I thought it was a good idea,” he testified, “because it had become so personal, that she needed to remind people what foreign services are and who we were loyal to and who we work for and that she was committed to that.”

The final decision not to release a statement in support Yovanovitch ultimately came from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Hale said he got the impression that was because, “it would only fuel further negative reaction.”

“One point of view was that it might even provoke a public reaction from the President himself about the ambassador,” he said.

“Our plan at that point was to try to contain this and wait it out,” Hale testified.

David Holmes could be a strong witness for Democrats when he testifies in public on Thursday. He used clear language explaining complicated situations, like why US aid for Ukraine helps counter Russia. And also he was more than willing to give his opinion or analyze key events — like whether the Ukrainians felt pressured. Other witnesses were reluctant to do that.

Not only that, but Holmes also brings firsthand knowledge of President Trump’s own words, from the phone call with US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland that he overheard at a Kiev restaurant. Pressed by Republicans on how he remembered what Trump said — four months later — Holmes said, “I recounted this, in this level of detail, multiple times to various people, because it was so distinctive.”

In his opening statement, Holmes said he came forward after reading news reports about the impeachment inquiry, and how people were saying that there wasn’t much firsthand evidence, and that key witnesses were only providing “hearsay,” which was a key talking point from Republicans in recent weeks. 

Additionally, Holmes also uses “sir” a lot in his answers, to both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, which could help him strike a respectful and civil tone on Thursday during his public testimony. He kept up this demeanor even when he was challenged by some of Trump’s top allies on the committee.

Holmes clearly did his homework too. Throughout his testimony, he refers to depositions from other witnesses, including Sondland and diplomat Bill Taylor. He appears to have a strong working knowledge of who said what. At one point, Holmes even referenced something that former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch said during her public hearing, which happened on Friday just a few hours before Holmes walked into the secure facility in the Capitol for his own deposition. 

State Department official David Holmes told lawmakers that the US embassy in Kiev wasn’t aware of “any new reasons” to open an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, formerly sat on the board. 

Trump and his GOP allies have claimed that there were legitimate reasons to investigate Hunter Biden and Burisma. Trump’s critics have said this was nothing more than a cover story for Trump to coerce Ukraine to help him with the 2020 election. 

He was asked if anyone at the Embassy looked into the merits of anything at all related to Burisma.

Here’s what Holmes said:

State Department aide David Holmes testified last week that Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s staff “was very aggressive in terms of promoting an agenda and excluding Embassy personnel from meetings without giving explanations.”

The testimony paints a picture of the parallel type of diplomacy other witnesses have described in Ukraine. This time with a focus on Perry, who is one of the self-styled “three amigos” helping execute the untraditional campaign.

Holmes said Perry’s team was not forthcoming with their goals in Ukraine.

“It was clear they knew what they wanted to do and were not — they were not giving us explanations for it,” he said.

Holmes said Perry handed a list of “trusted individuals” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for advice on the energy sector, and that he heard there were some with ties to energy in Texas. Perry is a former governor of the state.

He said embassy personnel were cut out of the process.

“They were getting business cards and WhatsApping and sending messages and things like that directly to the principals,” he said. “Oftentimes those things would involve the Embassy in some way so we had visibility on what policies we were advancing with those same principals who we would see on a regular basis, and we weren’t getting that.”

Former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) on June 19, 2017.

American diplomat David Hale told the panels investigating the House impeachment inquiry that a member of Congress alerted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to allegations about then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in the fall of 2018. 

Hale identified the member of Congress as “Congressman Sessions,” presumably referring to Texas Republican Pete Sessions, who retired earlier this year.

Asked for more detail, Hale said, “Only to say that the Secretary told me that his attitude to her or his response to that was that he needed to see evidence. He wasn’t going to take these allegations seriously unless he saw evidence behind them.”

More on this: Two associates of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pushed former Republican Rep. Pete Sessions to seek the ouster of the US ambassador to Ukraine at the same time as the associates were helping to bankroll his campaign, according to a federal indictment and campaign finance records.