Trump-Ukraine
scandal: US special envoy steps down as crisis widens
Kurt Volker
departs as further reports emerge of White House efforts to cut access to Trump
calls to Russia and Saudi Arabia
Julian
Borger in Washington
Sat 28 Sep
2019 03.59 BSTFirst published on Fri 27 Sep 2019 22.14 BST
Kurt
Volker, the US special envoy for Ukraine, has resigned, according to a US
official, becoming the first casualty in the rapidly growing impeachment crisis
surrounding Donald Trump.
Volker is
due to appear before Congress next week and was mentioned in the whistleblower
complaint as helping Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy “navigate” Trump’s
demands.
The news,
first reported in an Arizona student newspaper, the State Press, emerged late
on Friday, hours after Congress issued a subpoena to the US secretary of state,
Mike Pompeo, to hand over documents related to contacts the president and his
lawyer had with the Ukrainian government.
It emerged
this week that Volker had helped organise a meeting between Trump’s personal
lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and a Ukraine presidential aide. Giuliani was trying to
convince Zelenskiy’s government to investigate the son of Joe Biden, Trump’s
possible opponent in next year’s elections.
With
impeachment proceedings against Trump under way, further reports emerged of
White House efforts to limit access to transcripts of conversations with other
countries. Trump’s phone calls with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and
Russian president Vladimir Putin were also tightly restricted, according to
former administration officials quoted by CNN and the New York Times.
The
Washington Post reported that further restrictions were placed on details from
a 2017 meeting between Trump, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and
ambassador Sergei Kislyak, in which Trump is reported to have said he was not
bothered by Moscow interference in the 2016 election because the US did the
same kind of thing in other countries. The White House limited access to the
remarks to “an unusually small number of people”, the Post said, after speaking
to three former officials. The president had already been accused of sharing
highly sensitive information on the Islamic State movement during the meeting.
Earlier on
Friday, in a congressional letter delivered to Pompeo, three House committees
demanded documents as part of their investigation into “the extent to which
President Trump jeopardised national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere
with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by
Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression”.
The
chairmen of the intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight committees also
warned Pompeo that “your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall
constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry”.
The committees
sent a separate note to Pompeo notifying him of a rapid schedule of depositions
they expected to hold with five state department officials involved in contacts
with Ukraine. The list begins next Wednesday with the former ambassador, Marie
Yovanovitch, who was forced to retire from the post in May, earlier than
planned.
Trump,
according to the White House version of his 25 July conversation with
Zelenskiy, was scathing about Yovanovitch, referring to her as “the woman” who
was “bad news”, and who was “going to go through some things”.
Volker is
due to appear on 3 October, the day after Yovanovitch’s scheduled deposition.
Giuliani has publicly displayed text messages purportedly from Volker, about a
meeting he had helped arrange with a Zelenskiy aide.
Giuliani
was seeking to persuade the Kyiv government to investigate Hunter Biden, the
son of former vice-president Joe Biden, one of the frontrunners in the
Democratic primary for next year’s presidential election.
Giuliani
himself again came under scrutiny on Friday when it emerged he had accepted a
paid slot to speak at a Moscow-backed conference next week that Putin is
expected to attend. The appearance was promptly cancelled after a report by the
Washington Post.
The younger
Biden had been on the board of an Ukrainian energy company, but an Ukrainian
investigation found no evidence of impropriety.
Shortly
before making the call to Zelenskiy in July, to press him further on
investigating Biden, Trump ordered the suspension of US military aid to
Ukraine.
Speaking to
reporters on Thursday, Pompeo claimed to have been too busy to read more than a
couple of paragraphs of the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s behaviour towards
Ukraine, and insisted that no state department official had done anything
appropriate.
In their
letter to Pompeo, the three committee chairman, noted that he had first been
asked to hand over relevant documentation on 9 September, but had not complied.
“Your
actions are all the more troubling given that since our 9 September request, it
has become clear that multiple state department officials have direct knowledge
of the subject matters of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” the chairmen –
Democrats Eliot Engel, Adam Schiff and Elijah Cummings – said.
Pompeo’s
continued refusal to hand over the documents, they added, would impair
Congress’s “constitutional responsibilities to protect our national security
and the integrity of our democracy”.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário