Trump has heaped scorn on the State Department. Now its veteran diplomats are providing the evidence that could be used to impeach him.
The parade of witnesses going before the House committees weighing impeachment of President Trump has come overwhelmingly from one government agency: the State Department.
It started nearly two weeks ago with the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled by Trump amid a smear campaign, and crescendoed Tuesday with the current senior diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, directly contradicting the president’s claim that there was no quid pro quo in withholding much-needed American security aid for Ukraine until the country’s government agreed to investigate his political rivals.
“Harm will come when private interests circumvent professional diplomats for their own gain, not the public good,” she added.Pompeo came to the State Department a year and a half ago, promising to restore the agency’s “swagger.” He was initially welcomed by a staff suffering depleted morale following the rocky, budget-slashing tenure of Rex Tillerson.
“In August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular informal channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons,” Taylor, a four-decade foreign-service officer and Vietnam War veteran, said.
Sondland, who became a key intermediary on Ukraine even though it is not a member of the EU, acknowledged he was “disappointed” at Trump’s “explicit direction.”
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