OPINION

Taylor revelation ties Trump to the extortion scheme beyond the lone July 25 call. Second call reveals deliberate strategy Trump himself was pursuing.

Barbara McQuade | Opinion columnist

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

“READ THE TRANSCRIPT!”

President Donald Trump has been pounding that message for weeks. During the first public impeachment hearings regarding Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine, we learned a damning new fact that explains why.

At issue in the inquiry, of course, is whether Trump committed impeachable conduct toward Ukraine when he allegedly withheld military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for investigations into two subjects: interference in the 2016 presidential election and Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s potential presidential rivals in 2020. Under pressure after a whistleblower complaint, the White House released a summary of a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump has focused on what he calls that “transcript,” suggesting that it contains the totality of the evidence in the case against him. In deposition testimony from career State Department officials, we have learned that other members of the Trump administration might have been involved in other conduct to extort Ukraine to conduct investigations that would assist Trump in his reelection campaign, and testimony that the military aid was withheld at the president’s direction. But we had not yet heard additional evidence about Trump’s direct involvement.

A deliberate strategy Trump pursued

That changed during the hearing on Wednesday. During his opening statement, acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor disclosed that he had recently learned from a staff member about a phone call between Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Taylor said this call occurred in a restaurant on July 26, the day after Trump's call with Zelensky.

According to Taylor, his staff member — later identified by several news organizations as David Holmes, who was just added to the schedule to testify privately Friday — could hear Trump ask Sondland about "the investigations" into the 2016 elections and the Bidens. After the call, Sondland told the staff member that Trump "cares more about the investigations of Biden" than about Ukraine. In other words, Trump was putting his personal interests ahead of the interests of our country by using a strategic partner as a pawn in his own political campaign.

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This disclosure is significant because it ties Trump to the extortion scheme beyond the lone July 25 call. The second call on July 26 demonstrates that the first call was not just a poor choice of words but a deliberate strategy that Trump himself continued to pursue.

As Taylor further testified on Wednesday, he learned from Sondland that nearly $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine, approved by Congress to help repel Russia, was dependent on a public announcement about the investigations. Taylor testified that Sondland told him that “President Trump wanted president Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.” He further testified that a CNN interview with Zelensky was being planned for this purpose.

Ukraine is US bulwark against Russia

Both Taylor and the day’s other witness, State Department official George Kent, testified about the importance to the United States of providing security assistance to Ukraine. Taylor emphasized Ukraine is a “strategic partner” that is “important for the security of our country as well as Europe” against a “newly aggressive Russia.” Taylor expressed his view that “withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be ‘crazy.’ ”

Kent said that “Ukraine’s success is very much in our national interest,” and that requests for “politically associated investigations or prosecutions against opponents of those in power … undermine the rule of law.”

Before the testimony began, Republicans delayed the proceedings with questions about process that had already been answered. The top Republican on the panel, Devin Nunes, gave a rambling opening statement mocking the impeachment inquiry. He later spent considerable time spinning a counter (and discredited) narrative about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election justifying Trump’s conduct.

The contrast between GOP lawmakers on the one hand and career public servants like Taylor and Kent on the other was stark in style and substance.

Following the testimony of Wednesday’s witnesses, Trump and his supporters will no longer be able to argue with any remaining credibility that there was no quid pro quo or no abuse of power in leveraging military aid to obtain ammunition to smear Trump’s political rivals. The only defense that remains for Trump is that even if this conduct occurred, it does not rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor for which impeachment is appropriate.

The Taylor and Kent testimony just made that task much more difficult.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter: @barbmcquade

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