A State Dept. official began testifying this morning, the first administration official who appeared as scheduled this week.
David Hale, the No. 3 official at the State Department, arrived on Wednesday morning to testify in the impeachment inquiry, the first administration official this week to comply with investigators’ request to appear. Democrats want to ask Mr. Hale, the under secretary for political affairs, about the ouster of the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, and why he and others did not defend her against political attacks.
The recall of Ms. Yovanovitch was part of the shadow foreign policy effort on Ukraine driven largely by Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, who sought to smear her as disloyal to the president. Ms. Yovanovitch told investigators that she personally asked Mr. Hale to talk to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about issuing a statement of support. She said she never heard back.
Mr. Hale is one of four Trump administration officials who had been summoned to testify on Wednesday.
The three others were Russell T. Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget; T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a counselor at the State Department who was among the officials listening in on Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with the president of Ukraine; and Rick Perry, the energy secretary. None of them were expected to appear on Wednesday. Mr. Vought and Mr. Brechbuhl were subpoenaed after they failed to appear at depositions last month.
Democrats are rushing to call the last of the witnesses they are seeking to interview as they wrap up the fact-finding phase of their inquiry and move toward public hearings as soon as next week. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has indicated he will count refusals to appear as part of an article of impeachment against Mr. Trump for obstruction of Congress.
The lawyer for one key witness disputes another’s account of coffee and cordial chats.
The lawyer for Fiona Hill, a former top White House foreign policy adviser, on Wednesday accused Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, of having fabricated conversations with Ms. Hill during his testimony to impeachment investigators.
Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and political donor before his diplomatic appointment, said that he had a cordial relationship with Ms. Hill, according to a transcript of his testimony released on Tuesday. Mr. Sondland noted several times that he talked with Ms. Hill over coffee, at one point describing her as furious at Mr. Trump and “sort of shaking. She was pretty mad.”
In a tweet, Lee Wolosky, Ms. Hill’s lawyer, said that Mr. Sondland had “fabricated communications with Dr. Hill, none of which were over coffee.” He added that Ms. Hill, who resigned in July before Mr. Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine, told Mr. Sondland what she told lawmakers, that “the lack of coordination on Ukraine” was disastrous and that “the circumstances of the dismissal” of Ms. Yovanovitch were “shameful.”
Ms. Hill has told investigators that she viewed Mr. Sondland as a national security risk because of his lack of experience.
Trump liked what he read in Kurt Volker’s transcript.
Mr. Trump on Wednesday thanked Kurt D. Volker, his former special envoy to Ukraine, for telling investigators that he did not know anything about a quid pro quo. Impeachment investigators on Tuesday released the transcript of Mr. Volker’s testimony.
Mr. Volker made the remarks in response to an investigator’s question about the conversations he had with two other witnesses in early September. Mr. Volker said he did not have conversations about a quid pro quo because he did not know that there was one.
Mr. Volker resigned in September amid the Ukraine controversy and provided key testimony to investigators, including the detail that he warned Mr. Trump’s private attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that the Biden-Ukraine narrative that he and the president were advancing was not credible weeks before Mr. Trump’s July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine.
From Tuesday: House Democrats released revised testimony from Sondland and summoned Mulvaney to appear.
Mr. Sondland revised his testimony this week to add that he told Ukrainian officials that military aid was tied to their commitment to investigations President Trump wanted.
“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said in a new four-page sworn statement, which House investigators released along with the transcript of his original testimony.