Big testimony revisions, bribery, and the ‘Gordon problem’: Biggest moments from Volker’s and Morrison’s hearing

Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy for the Ukraine peace talks, appeared to change portions of his testimony in Tuesday's opening statement, including details about a July 10 meeting he attended at the White House with Gordon Sondland, Ukrainian officials and others.

In his closed-door deposition last month, Volker categorically denied that the issue of “investigations” had come up in that meeting. But in his new statement, Volker says Sondland did make “a generic comment about investigations,” which “all of us thought was inappropriate.”

Volker also claims in his opening statement, “I did not know about the strong concerns expressed by then-national security adviser John Bolton to members of his NSC staff regarding the discussion of investigations.” But he acknowledges participating in the meeting which, according to the testimony of several other witnesses, Bolton angrily cut short once Sondland began discussing political probes.

Despite his efforts to connect Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani with a top aide to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky — and his drafting of a statement that would commit Zelensky to the investigations Trump demanded — Volker has sought to portray himself as out of the loop on much of the backchannel diplomacy Sondland and Giuliani were pursuing.

He also said he did not understand until recently that “Burisma” was linked to Hunter Biden, despite discussing with Giuliani on July 19 the possibility that Joe Biden might have been influenced by his son's role in the Ukrainian gas company as vice president — which Volker described as a “conspiracy theory.”

Volker’s testimony, along with senior NSC official Tim Morrison, comes after Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Jennifer Williams testified earlier in the day.

Below are the biggest highlights from the day's hearing.

Dismissing Sondland

Volker and Morrison laid out a bumpy road ahead for Sondland, who is set to testify Wednesday, in their testimony. The pair repeatedly took repeated shots at Sondland, distancing themselves from Trump's scheme, which he played a central role in, to withhold military aid for Ukraine until the country’s leaders publicly committed to investigating Trump’s political rivals.

Volker and Morrison stood out in particular for their dismissive tone toward the ambassador, who Republicans will try to paint as a political crony who only wanted to curry favor with Trump.

Volker "refreshed" his testimony relating to a July 10 meeting at the White House between a handful of U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly cut the meeting short when Sondland mentioned “investigations.”

While Volker said Sondland’s reference was just a generalization rather than a specific allusion to the investigations Trump sought into the Biden family and events surrounding the 2016 election and that he believed such investigations might have been appropriate, he also noted that “I think all of us thought it was inappropriate.”

Morrison said that while prepping for Vice President Mike Pence for a visit in Warsaw in September where he was set to meet with Zelensky, Sondland butted in to the prebriefing, a move which he said apparently ticked off then-national security adviser John Bolton.

“I was not there,” Morrison said. But “the issue I remember most starkly was Ambassador Bolton was quite annoyed that Ambassador Sondland crashed the pre-brief.”

Volker’s ironic request

Volker’s mental “refresh” also allowed lawmakers to learn more about his efforts to tamp down Ukrainian hopes of investigating Zelensky’s electoral rival. The former EU envoy said he attempted to discourage Zelensky’s team from investigating the newly elected president’s defeated electoral opponent, his top aide Andrey Yermak did not hesitate to point out the irony in that request, which Volker testified he failed to grasp at the time.

“I cautioned Mr. Yermak to say that pursuing prosecution of President Poroshenko risks deepening the divisions in the country, exactly the opposite of what President Zelensky says he wants to do,” Volker says he argued.

"What, you mean like asking us to investigate Clinton and Biden?" Yermak retorted, a comment Volker said “puzzled” him at the time.

The ‘Gordon problem’

Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill told Morrison about the “Gordon problem” — a term she coined to refer to Sondland’s effort to promote the Burisma investigation — before handing off the job off to him.

After numerous discussions with the former top Russia adviser to Trump, Morrison said he decided to “keep track” of what Sondland was doing and “didn’t always act” on issues the ambassador thought were important.

Morrison said he understand both Sondland and Trump wanted a meeting with Zelensky, though he testified he did not endorse the notion of Zelensky sending a message about investigations.

Hill is scheduled to publicly testify on Thursday.

Morrison: ‘My fears have been realized’

Morrison, as one of the first GOP-requested witnesses to testify publicly in the impeachment inquiry, said that he had sought to restrict access to the partial transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call because, as he testified in his closed-door deposition, he had concerns about “how its disclosure would play in Washington’s political climate.”

“My fears have been realized,” he said of the political firestorm sparked by that call.

Morrison also noted that he did not intend for his testimony to be taken as an attack on the “character or integrity” of his colleagues on the NSC. That sentiment came hours after Republican lawmakers pointed to his criticisms of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman during the first session of Tuesday’s impeachment hearing and after the White House used his words to attack Vindman on its official Twitter account.

In his closed-door testimony, Morrison told lawmakers he had unspecified concerns about Vindman's judgment, and sought to "keep an eye on Alex."

Volker: 'I wouldn’t call it a condition'

Volker testified that he did not believe a public commitment from Zelensky to launch political investigations was a “condition” for a White House meeting, appearing to contradict texts he wrote on July 25 that directly linked the meeting to Zelensky’s willingness to commit to the investigations.

His remark also contradicted testimony from U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, who said it had become “clear” to him by mid-July “that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.”

Asked whether a statement from Zelensky committing to the investigations was “a necessary condition” for a White House meeting, Volker, who had been helping draft the statement for Zelensky, replied: “I wouldn’t have called it a necessary condition, and when it became clear later that we were not going to agree on a statement that the Ukrainians were comfortable with, I agreed that the Ukrainians should just drop it, it’s not worth it.”

“I wouldn’t have called it a condition,” Volker repeated upon further questioning. “It’s a nuance I guess, but I viewed it as very helpful ... to get the date for the meeting.”

Morrison diverged somewhat from Volker, testifying that he understood that -- at least according to Sondland, who had spoken with the president -- a statement by Zelensky announcing corruption probes into Biden and the 2016 election was a necessary condition for military aid to be released.

GOP dings Dems’ shift in rhetoric

House Republicans attempted to elicit sound bites from Volker and Morrison aimed at exonerating Trump at multiple points throughout the hearing.

At the beginning of Republicans’ 45-minute questioning block, Intelligence ranking member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) asked both men if they’d ever been asked to “bribe or extort anyone” while in their roles with the administration, a tactic aimed at heading off Democrats’ shift in rhetoric away from accusing Trump of a "quid pro quo."

Both Volker and Morrison responded in the negative.

When Nunes turned over his time to Steve Castor, the minority counsel, he mimicked the strategy when interrogating Volker, noting that the former Ukraine envoy already been asked behind closed doors about whether he was aware of any quid pro quo.

When Volker said again that he never got that impression, Castor then asked: “And the same would go for this new allegation of bribery?”

Volker responded he’d only heard bribery discussed over the last week, to which Castor asserted, “It's the same common set of facts; it's just instead of quid pro quo now it's bribery.”

Castor managed to extract the magic words from Volker when the former Ukraine envoy replied, “I was never involved in anything that I considered to be bribery at all.” After prodding, he said the same of extortion.

Republicans have sought throughout the public impeachment hearings to draw out opinions from witnesses about whether Trump committed a crime or an impeachable offense.

Volker distances himself from Trump-Sondland call in Kyiv

Volker also pleaded ignorance about a call between Sondland and Trump that took place the day after Trump’s infamous phone call with Zelensky that had gone unreported until last week. Acting ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor was the first to reveal that the call took place after learning about it from aides who overheard it while in a Kyiv restaurant.

“I was not aware that Ambassador Sondland spoke with President Trump on July 26th, while Ambassador Taylor and I were visiting the conflict zone,” Volker said in his opening statement, likely looking to stave off questions about whether he knew about the call and neglected to mention it before.

How close were Sondland and Trump?

Asked to confirm previous testimony that on one occasion Sondland boasted he could call the president whenever he wanted, Morrison told investigators that later he’d been able to confirm multiple other occasions when Sondland’s claims he’d spoken to Trump checked out.

While Volker and Morrison provided a fuller account of the Trump administration’s shadow foreign policy campaign toward Ukraine, some of their accounts had slight differences from the prevailing narrative.

Morrison appeared to suggest throughout the hearing that he believed Sondland could be overselling his closeness to Trump or that he’d been acting at Trump’s behest.

He was careful to attribute statements to Sondland, including when the EU ambassador relayed to him that he’d informed Zelensky’s top aide that military assistance was linked to announcements of the investigations.

“I was concerned about what I saw as essentially an additional hurdle to accomplishing what I had been directed to help accomplish, which was giving the president the information he needed to determine that the security sector assistance could go forward,” Morrison said.

When pressed by Democrats’ lead counsel if Sondland’s disclosure added “a whole other wrinkle” to the situation, Morrison pointedly noted that “there was the appearance of one based on what Ambassador Sondland represented.”

Pressed more, Morrison emphasized multiple times that “Sondland believed” the release of the aid was linked to the investigations. Even after Sondland said he’d spoken to Trump, Morrison said, the linkage “is what [Sondland] represented.” In closed door testimony, Morrison said the revelation gave him “a sinking feeling.”

Morrison went to White House lawyers twice in the beginning of September to report his concerns with what Sondland had told him, again emphasizing when asked that when it came to getting the aid unfrozen, “I was concerned about what Ambassador Sondland was saying were requirements, yes.”