Volker Gives New Details on Giuliani’s Role in Ukraine Policy

WASHINGTON — The former State Department special envoy for Ukraine told congressional investigators that Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, demanded that Ukraine specifically commit to investigate involvement in the 2016 election and a firm tied to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

During testimony behind closed doors on Thursday, the special envoy, Kurt D. Volker, said Mr. Giuliani rejected a generic draft statement that Ukraine’s government had agreed to issue committing to fighting corruption generally. Instead, Mr. Giuliani said the Ukrainians had to promise to pursue two specific investigations that could damage the president’s political domestic adversaries.

While Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Ukraine have been known, Mr. Volker’s account to House committees conducting an impeachment inquiry provides new details about how the president’s personal lawyer inserted himself into foreign policy to benefit Mr. Trump politically. Not only was Mr. Giuliani meeting with Ukrainian officials, he was effectively dictating the contents of a statement being negotiated by State Department officials with a foreign power.

Mr. Giuliani “said that in his view, the statement should include specific reference to ‘Burisma’ and ‘2016,’” Mr. Volker told the House investigators, according to a copy of his prepared testimony provided by a person involved in the process who did not want to be named. “There was no mention of Vice President Biden in these conversations.”

But Burisma was the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden served for $50,000 a month, and the Ukrainians clearly understood that Mr. Giuliani’s interest in an investigation into the firm was aimed at finding damaging information about the former vice president, who had led dealings with Ukraine while in office.

“I edited the draft statement by Mr. Yermak to include these points to see how it looked,” Mr. Volker testified, referring to Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. “I then discussed further with Mr. Yermak. He said that for a number of reasons” that “they do not want to mention Burisma and 2016.”

“I agreed,” Mr. Volker added, “and further said that I believe it is essential that Ukraine do nothing that could be seen as interfering in 2020 elections. It is bad enough that accusations have been made about 2016 — it is essential that Ukraine not be involved in anything relating to 2020. He agreed and the idea of putting out a statement was shelved.”

Mr. Volker’s testimony has attracted enormous interest as the first person to testify about the Ukraine matter since Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened a formal impeachment inquiry. An ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush, Mr. Volker was serving as special envoy part time without pay but abruptly resigned last week after revelations about the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for an investigation into Mr. Biden.

Mr. Volker also plans to resign on Friday as executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a Washington-based research group affiliated with Arizona State University. The institute leadership has privately expressed discontent with his twin roles, complaining that he was not as forthcoming as they wished, and pressured Mr. Volker to step down.

A person familiar with Mr. Volker’s views said he was planning to leave later this year and decided to go right away to avoid being a distraction for the institute as a result of the furor over the Ukraine matter and impeachment inquiry.

For Mr. Volker, it has been a week of many transitions. He is also scheduled to get married on Saturday in Washington.

In his testimony on Thursday, Mr. Volker emphasized to the congressional investigators that he was kept out of the loop on the president’s efforts to prompt an investigation of Mr. Biden and was not on Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky that has triggered the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Volker sought in his testimony to distance himself from the pressure campaign by the president and Mr. Giuliani. “At no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden,” he told investigators.

“Moreover,” Mr. Volker added, “as I was aware of public accusations about the vice president, several times I cautioned the Ukrainians to distinguish between highlighting their own efforts to fight corruption domestically, including investigating Ukrainian individuals — something we support as a matter of U.S. policy — and doing anything that could be seen as impacting U.S. elections, which is in neither the United States’ nor Ukraine’s own interests.”

Mr. Volker testified that he “became concerned that a negative narrative about Ukraine” was tainting Mr. Trump’s view of the country and impeding efforts to bolster the country against Russian aggression.

“I therefore faced a choice: do nothing, and allow this situation to fester, or try to fix it,” he testified. “I tried to fix it.”

He agreed to connect Mr. Giuliani with senior Ukrainian officials at the request of the Ukrainians in hopes of convincing the former New York mayor that Mr. Zelensky and the new government were reformers worthy of American support.

At a breakfast with Mr. Giuliani on July 19, Mr. Volker testified, he warned him against the political conspiracy theories the former mayor was pursuing related to Mr. Biden. He said he told Mr. Giuliani that “it is not credible to me that former Vice President Biden would have been influenced in any way by financial or personal motives in carrying out his duties as vice president.” While Ukrainians may have acted for corrupt motives, he said, he did not believe Mr. Biden had.

Mr. Volker said that he learned of Mr. Trump’s decision to hold up $391 million in aid to Ukraine on July 18, the day before his breakfast with Mr. Giuliani, and a week before the phone call between the two leaders, but he did not connect the issue to the pressure for investigations.

“I did not perceive these issues to be linked in any way,” Mr. Volker said.

While he was not on the July 25 call, he was in Ukraine at the time and met with Mr. Zelensky the next day and received “a general readout” from American and Ukrainian officials.

“All said it was a good, congratulatory call, that they discussed the importance of fighting corruption and promoting reform in Ukraine, and that President Trump reiterated his invitation to President Zelensky to visit the White House,” Mr. Volker said. “I was not made aware of any references to Vice President Biden or his son.”

He learned about that only when the White House released a rough transcript of the call last week. Two days later he resigned.

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