A swath of damning text messages between State Department officials has been released related to the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.
Read the text messages here.
The Daily Beast reports: ‘By September, that effort so alarmed the recently appointed chargé d’affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Bill Taylor, that he called it “crazy” and spiraling toward a “nightmare scenario.” Another Trump appointee, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, insisted Taylor was “incorrect” about Trump dangling a “quid pro quo” before Zelensky—the same quid pro quo that Sondland and his colleagues, from Trump on down, had spent months orchestrating.’
CNN adds: “On the morning of the call, in an exchange with a key adviser to the Ukrainian President, then-US Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker made clear that it was important to the White House that Zelensky convince Trump that an investigation into the 2016 election would happen. … Volker provided Congress with the text messages ahead of his closed-door congressional testimony on Thursday before three committees leading the House’s impeachment inquiry into Trump and Ukraine. … That Trump wanted an investigation was a message that seemed to register with the Ukrainian administration. Volker and the Ukrainian adviser, Andrey Yermak, continued to text after the call about Zelensky making a public statement ahead of a meeting between the two leaders.”
