Trump’s woes mount with witnesses, Mulvaney blunder

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump confronted a steady drip of damaging revelations out of the House impeachment hearings, but it was his acting chief of staff essentially confirming one of the central allegations at the heart of the inquiry that could prove the most troublesome.
Mick Mulvaney said at a White House briefing the president withheld nearly $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine in part to urge an investigation of a 2016 election conspiracy theory to discredit Democrats.
The episode capped off a rough week for the president, who had ordered his administration to block all cooperation with the impeachment inquiry. Despite that, a stream of witnesses summoned spoke with House investigators behind closed doors.
What emerged through a series of leaked statements and lawmaker accounts was a picture of a shadow foreign policy centred around Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
The accounts were consistent from both career diplomats alarmed at the outsourcing of American diplomacy and from witnesses that Republicans hoped would be more favourable to the president.
One witness, Trump’s former top Russia adviser Fiona Hill, told House panels that John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, referred to Giuliani as a “hand grenade.”
Gordon Sondland, appointed as ambassador to the European Union after donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee, said he was uncomfortable with the parallel diplomacy of Trump’s personal lawyer and he was unaware of Giuliani’s specific objectives.
Other administration officials from the Office of Management and Budget, the Defense Department and the National Security Council are scheduled to testify this coming week. One of the star witnesses will be William Taylor, the current acting ambassador to Ukraine who voiced concern about the reason why foreign aid was being withheld.
“It is astounding to me how many career public servants are coming forward, putting their necks on the line, and testifying,” said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the Oversight committee.
The impeachment probe started with questions about whether Trump froze aid for Ukraine and dangled a US visit for the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to pressure him to investigate unfounded allegations regarding a Democratic National Committee computer server, and about former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 candidate.
Trump and Republicans had declared there was no quid pro quo, but Mulvaney’s admission at the briefing made it harder for GOP lawmakers to avoid questions about Trump’s conduct.
“I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” Mulvaney said. He said Trump “absolutely” brought up the server as part of the reason why the administration held up US aid for Ukraine.
Democrats eventually will have to decide when they have enough information to write articles of impeachment and put them on the House floor for a vote. If Trump is impeached in the House, he must then be convicted by the Senate to be removed from office.