Read Adam Schiff's and Devin Nunes' opening statements for Vindman, Williams impeachment hearing
WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee is hearing testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council expert on Ukraine, and Jennifer Williams, an NSC aide in the vice president's office, in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine on Tuesday morning.
Trump is accused of leveraging military aid and a valuable White House meeting for the opening of investigations into domestic political rivals. He has denied wrongdoing and maintained he was concerned about corruption.
Both officials were on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked the foreign leader look into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Tuesday afternoon, former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and NSC Senior Director for Russia and Europe Tim Morrison will appear before the Intelligence Committee.
More: How to stay updated on USA TODAY's impeachment coverage
Here are House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff's and ranking Republican member Rep. Devin Nunes' prepared opening remarks for Vindman and Williams' hearing:
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Last week, we heard from three experienced diplomats who testified about President Trump’s scheme to condition official acts — a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military aid to fight the Russians — on a “deliverable” by the new Ukrainian President Zelensky, two politically-motivated investigations Trump believed would help his reelection campaign.
One of those investigations involved the Bidens and the other involved a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine and not Russia was responsible for interfering in our 2016 election.
As Ambassador Sondland would later tell career Foreign Service Officer David Holmes immediately after speaking to the President, Trump “did not give a” – he then used an expletive – about Ukraine. He cares about “‘big stuff’” that benefits the President “like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Giuliani was pushing.”
To press a foreign leader to announce an investigation into his political rival, President Trump put his own personal and political interests above those of the nation. He undermined our military and diplomatic support for a key ally, and undercut U.S. anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. How could our diplomats urge Ukraine to refrain from political investigations of its own citizens, if the President of the United States was urging Ukraine to engage in precisely the same kind of corrupt and political investigation of one of our own citizens?
At the White House, career professionals became concerned that President Trump, through an irregular channel that involved his acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Rudy Giuliani, was pushing a policy towards Ukraine at odds with the national interest
This morning we hear from two of the national security professionals who became aware of these efforts.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, whose family fled oppression in the Soviet Union when he was a toddler, is a career Army officer, an Iraq War veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart, and an expert in Russia and Ukraine who has worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In July 2018, he was detailed to the White House, in part to coordinate policy on Ukraine.
Jennifer Williams is a career Foreign Service Officer who is currently detailed to the Office of the Vice-President and responsible for Europe and Eurasia issues.
Following his initial and congratulatory phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky on April 21, Trump asked Vice-President Pence to represent him at Zelensky’s upcoming inauguration. Ms. Williams was working on logistics for the trip. Pence would be a coveted attendee, second in significance only to the President, and it would have sent an important signal of support to the new Ukrainian President.
In early May, however, Rudy Giuliani had been planning to go to Ukraine to pursue the President’s interest in having the Bidens investigated, but had to call off the trip after it became public. Among others, Giuliani blamed people around Zelensky for having to cancel, and claimed they were antagonistic to Trump. Three days later, the President called off the Vice President’s attendance at Zelensky’s inauguration.
Instead, a lower level delegation was named: Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Ambassador Kurt Volker — the Three Amigos. Senator Ron Johnson and Lt. Col. Vindman would also attend.
After returning from the inauguration, several members of the delegation briefed President Trump on their encouraging first interactions with Zelensky. They urged Trump to meet with the Ukrainian President. But Trump instead criticized Ukraine and instructed them to “work with Rudy.”
A few weeks later, on July 10th, Ambassador Sondland met at the White House with a group of U.S. and Ukrainian officials, including Col. Vindman, and informed the group that according to Chief of Staff Mulvaney, the White House meeting sought by the Ukrainian President with Trump would happen if Ukraine undertook certain investigations.
National Security Advisor Bolton abruptly ended the meeting and said afterwards that he would not be “part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.”
Undeterred, Sondland brought the Ukrainian delegation downstairs to another part of the White House and was more explicit, according to witnesses: Ukraine needed to investigate the Bidens or Burisma, if they were to get a White House meeting with Trump. After this discussion, which Vindman witnessed, he went to the National Security Council’s top lawyer to report the matter. Vindman was told to return in the future with any further concerns, and he would soon find the need to do so.
A week later, on July 18, a representative from the Office of Management and Budget announced on a video conference call that Mulvaney, at Trump’s direction, was freezing nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine which was appropriated by Congress and enjoyed the support of the entirety of the U.S. national security establishment.
And one week after that, Trump would have the now infamous July 25th phone call with Zelensky. During that call, Trump complained that the U.S. relationship with Ukraine had not been “reciprocal.” Later, Zelensky thanks Trump for his support “in the area of defense,” and says that Ukraine was ready to purchase more Javelins, an antitank weapon that was among the most important deterrents of further Russian military action. Trump’s immediate response: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”
Trump then requested that Zelensky investigate the discredited 2016 conspiracy theory, and even more ominously, look into the Bidens. Neither was part of the official preparatory material for the call, but they were in Donald Trump’s personal interest, and in the interests of his 2020 re-election campaign. And the Ukrainian President knew about both in advance — because Sondland and others had been pressing Ukraine for weeks about investigations into the 2016 election, Burisma and the Bidens.
Both Col. Vindman and Ms. Williams were on the July 25th call. Vindman testified that due to the unequal bargaining position of the two leaders and Ukraine’s dependency on the U.S., the favor Trump asked of Zelensky was really a demand. After the call, multiple individuals, including Vindman, were concerned enough to report it to the National Security Council’s top lawyer. It was the second time in two weeks that Vindman had raised concerns with the NSC lawyers.
For her part, Williams also believed that asking Zelensky to undertake these political investigations was inappropriate, and that it might explain something else she had become aware of — the otherwise inexplicable hold on U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.
Both Col. Vindman and Ms. Williams also took note of the explicit use of the word Burisma by Zelensky, a fact conspicuously left out of the record of the call, now locked away on an ultra-secure server. Col. Vindman believed that Zelensky must have been prepped for the call, to be able to make the connection between Biden and Burisma, a fact that other witnesses have now confirmed.
In the weeks that followed the July 25th call, Col. Vindman continued to push for a release of the military aid to Ukraine, and struggled to learn why it was being withheld. More disturbing, word of the hold had reached Ukrainian officials prior to it becoming public. By mid-August, the Ukrainian Deputy Ambassador asked Vindman why the United States was withholding the aid. Although Vindman didn’t have an answer, Sondland made it explicit to the Ukrainians at a meeting in Warsaw: They needed to publicly commit to these two investigations if they hoped to get the aid.
Ms. Williams, we all saw the President’s tweet about you on Sunday afternoon and the insults he hurled at Ambassador Yovanovich last Friday. You are here today, and the American people are grateful. Col. Vindman, we have seen far more scurrilous attacks on your character, and watched as certain personalities on Fox have questioned your loyalty. I note that you have shed blood for America, and we owe you an immense debt of gratitude.
Today’s witnesses, like those who testified last week, are here because they were subpoenaed to appear, not because they are for or against impeachment.
That question is for Congress, not the fact witnesses. If the President abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts — a White House meeting or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid — it will be up to us to decide, whether those acts are compatible with the office of the Presidency.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
I’d like to address a few brief words to the American people watching at home.
If you watched the impeachment hearings last week, you may have noticed a disconnect between what you actually saw and the mainstream media accounts describing it. What you saw were three diplomats, who dislike the President’s Ukraine policy, discussing second-hand and third-hand conversations about their objections. Meanwhile, they admitted they had not talked to the president about these matters, and they were unable to identify any crime or impeachable offense the President committed.
But what you read in the press were accounts of shocking, damning, and explosive testimony that fully supports the Democrats’ accusations.
If these accounts have a familiar ring, it’s because this is the same preposterous reporting the media offered for three years on the Russia hoax. On a near-daily basis, the top news outlets in America reported breathlessly on the newest bombshell revelations showing that President Trump and everyone surrounding him are Russian agents. It really wasn’t long ago that we were reading these headlines:
From CNN: “Congress investigating Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” That was false.
From the New York Times: “Trump Campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence.” That was false.
From Slate: “Was a Trump server communicating with Russia?” That was false.
From New York Magazine: “Will Trump be meeting with his counterpart or his handler?” That was false.
From the Guardian: “Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy, sources say.” That was false.
And from Buzzfeed: “President Trump directed his attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project.” That was false.
There was no objectivity or fairness in the media’s Russia stories—just a fevered rush to tarnish and remove a president who refuses to pretend that the media are something different than what they really are—puppets of the Democratic Party.
With their biased misreporting on the Russia hoax, the media lost the confidence of millions of Americans. And because they refused to acknowledge how badly they botched the story, they’ve learned no lessons and simply expect Americans will believe them as they try to stoke yet another partisan frenzy.
In previous hearings, I’ve outlined three questions the Democrats and the media don’t want asked or answered. Instead of shedding light on these crucial questions, the media are trying to smother and dismiss them. Those questions are:
First, what is the full extent of the Democrats’ prior coordination with the Whistleblower and who else did the Whistleblower coordinate this effort with?
The media have fully accepted the Democrats’ stunning reversal on the need for the Whistleblower to testify to this committee. When the Democrats were insisting on his testimony, the media wanted it too.
But things have changed since it became clear the Whistleblower would have to answer problematic questions, including
What was the full extent of the Whistleblower’s prior coordination with Chairman Schiff, his staff, and any other people he cooperated with while preparing the complaint?
What are the Whistleblower’s political biases and connections to Democratic politicians?
How does the Whistleblower explain the inaccuracies in the complaint?
What contact did the Whistleblower have with the media, which appears to be ongoing?
What are the sources of the Whistleblower’s information, who else did he talk to, and was the Whistleblower prohibited by law from receiving or conveying any of that information?
The media have joined the Democrats in dismissing the importance of cross-examining this crucial witness. Now that the Whistleblower has successfully kickstarted impeachment, he has disappeared from the story—as if the Democrats put the Whistleblower in their own Witness Protection Program.
My second question: What is the full extent of Ukraine’s election meddling against the Trump campaign?
In these depositions and hearings, Republicans have cited numerous indications of Ukrainians meddling in the 2016 elections to oppose the Trump campaign. Many of these instances were reported, including the posting of many primary source documents, by veteran investigative journalist John Solomon.
Since the Democrats switched from Russia to Ukraine for their impeachment crusade, Solomon’s reporting on Burisma, Hunter Biden, and Ukrainian election meddling has become inconvenient for the Democratic narrative, and so the media is furiously smearing and libeling Solomon.
In fact, the publication The Hill told its staff yesterday it would conduct a review of Solomon’s Ukraine reporting. Coincidentally, the decision came just three days after a Democrat on this committee told a Hill writer that she would stop speaking to The Hill because it had run Solomon’s stories, and she urged the writer to relay her concerns to Hill management.
So now that Solomon’s reporting is a problem for the Democrats, it’s a problem for the media as well.
I’d like to submit for the record John Solomon’s October 31 story titled, “Debunking some of the Ukraine scandal myths about Biden and election interference.” I encourage viewers today to read this story and draw your own conclusions about the evidence Solomon has gathered.
The concerted campaign by the media to discredit and disown one of their own colleagues is shocking. And we see it again in the sudden denunciations of New York Times reporter Ken Vogel as a conspiracy theorist after he covered similar issues, including a 2017 Politico piece entitled, “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.”
And my third question: Why did Burisma hire Hunter Biden, what did he do for them, and did his position affect any U.S. government actions under the Obama administration?
We have now heard testimony from the Democrats’ own witnesses that diplomats were concerned about a conflict of interest involving Hunter Biden. That’s because he had secured a well-paid position, despite having no qualifications, on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father was Vice President charged with overseeing Ukrainian issues.
After trying out several different accusations against President Trump, the Democrats have recently settled on “bribery”—according to widespread reports, they replaced their “quid pro quo” allegation because it wasn’t polling well.
But if the Democrats and the media are suddenly so deeply concerned about bribery, you’d think they would take some interest in Burisma paying Hunter Biden $83,000 a month. And you’d think they would be interested in Joe Biden threatening to withhold U.S. loan guarantees unless the Ukrainians fired a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. That would be a textbook example of bribery.
The media, of course, are free to act as Democrat puppets, and they’re free to lurch from the Russia hoax to the Ukraine hoax at the direction of their puppet masters. But they cannot reasonably expect to do so without alienating half the country who voted for the President they’re trying to expel.
Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won’t give it to them straight, they’ll go elsewhere to find it—which is exactly what the American people are doing.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Schiff's and Nunes' opening statements in Vindman, Williams impeachment hearing
