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Impeachment Inquiry: Mulvaney Undercuts Trump’s Denials of Quid Pro Quo
The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: What Happened Today
(about 5 hours later)
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reporters that the release of military aid to Ukraine this summer was linked in part to White House demands that Ukraine’s government investigate what he called corruption by Democrats in the 2016 American presidential campaign.
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reporters that the Trump administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate an unfounded conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. That effectively confirmed a premise of the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
It was the first time a White House official has publicly acknowledged what a parade of current and former administration officials have told impeachment investigators on Capitol Hill.
Asked whether he had just admitted to a quid pro quo, Mr. Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time with foreign policy.” Hours later, he tried to reverse his statement, saying, “There was absolutely no quid pro quo.” (Read his conflicting statements here.)
“The look-back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation,” Mr. Mulvaney told reporters, referring to Mr. Trump. “And that is absolutely appropriate.”
In testimony before impeachment investigators, President Trump’s ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, said the president had essentially delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Rudy Giuliani, and had refused the counsel of his top diplomats. Mr. Giuliani’s goal, Mr. Sondland said, may have been “to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”
He said that the aid was initially withheld because, “Everybody knows this is a corrupt place,” and the president was demanding Ukraine clean up its own government. But Mr. Trump also told Mr. Mulvaney that he was concerned about what he thought was Ukraine’s role in the 2016 campaign.
Impeachment investigators have been gathering evidence for weeks to prove what Mr. Mulvaney freely admitted to reporters in the White House Briefing Room. I talked to my colleague Maggie Haberman about why he said something so stunning.
“Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the D.N.C. server? Absolutely. No question about that,” he said. “But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”
Maggie, whoa. That happened in front of reporters at the White House.
Mr. Mulvaney was referring to Mr. Trump’s discredited idea that a server with Hillary Clinton’s missing emails was being held by a company based in Ukraine.
The briefing was jaw-dropping by any metric. He admitted to a quid pro quo. But it showed once again something you and I talked about two weeks ago: Mr. Trump tries to shift the window on conduct by revealing stuff publicly to take the sting out of its discovery. Mr. Mulvaney insisted the terminology doesn’t matter, but he bluntly acknowledged that aid was withheld from Ukraine to get a desired outcome on an investigation. That is at the heart of what Democrats have been trying to ascertain.
Mr. Mulvaney’s comments undercut the president’s repeated denials that there was a quid pro quo linking his demand for an investigation that could politically benefit him to the release of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russian-backed separatists on its eastern border.
Was it actually the plan for him to do this?
The passing of Representative Elijah E. Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, cast a pall over the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Cummings’ signature was one of three on the letters seeking witnesses and information, along with the names of Adam B. Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chairman, and Eliot L. Engel, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman.
I do think it was, yes — at least in part. Remember, this happened as Mr. Sondland was on the Hill giving a closed-door deposition. So I think Mr. Mulvaney was trying to rob House Democrats of a headline and frame the events on his own, to take the air out of the sails by saying it out loud. But it’s not clear that he was actually supposed to say there was a quid pro quo. It’s breathtaking that he’s the first person they’ve sent out to expressly discuss these issues and that he said so much.
Moreover, his commanding voice and moral authority gave the effort a clarity it might not otherwise have achieved.
How might this affect the impeachment investigation?
His death left practical questions for House Democratic leaders that will have to be answered almost immediately. Will proceedings take a break for mourning? Who will take the gavel at the Oversight Committee? Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York is next in seniority, and has been named the acting chairwoman. But she has not played a large public role in the oversight of the Trump White House. After her is Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting delegate of the District of Columbia.
He came out and admitted to a lot of what House Democrats were hoping to get from him in a deposition! I can’t imagine the White House counsel and others were thrilled. Mr. Mulvaney and the counsel’s office have been at odds lately.
Not until No. 6 does a prominent public figure in the impeachment inquiry emerge, Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, chairman of the subcommittee on government operations. Ultimately, it will likely be Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call.
Since we’re talking about Mr. Mulvaney, why is he the guy Mr. Trump has wanted as his air traffic controller with Ukraine and now impeachment?
Moreover, Ms. Pelosi still must decide what will happen to the Oversight Committee’s main threads of investigation, including the push for financial records of President Trump and the Trump Organization. Will such efforts become a facet of impeachment, or will she focus on Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political rival, more the purview of the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence panels?
He’s what Mr. Trump thinks he needs. When he sold himself to Mr. Trump as chief of staff, part of his pitch was that he had run two agencies and that both were drama-free. But the president grinds down guardrails, and Mr. Mulvaney wants job security. He has the same problem the other Trump chiefs of staff have had, which is this concern about self-preservation that can be at odds with the needs of the president. I think he was willing to go out and be the “human hand grenade,” to borrow a turn of phrase from the Fiona Hill testimony.
For Thursday, mourning was the order of the day. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, wrote, “As a member of the House of Representatives, Elijah was a leader for both parties to emulate, and someone to share a laugh with even amongst the most contentious times. His presence will be deeply missed.”
I’m sensing some irony in the outcome, then.
Republicans called off a vote to censure one of Mr. Cummings’ allies, Mr. Schiff. It would have failed.
Mr. Mulvaney’s job has been perceived as being in jeopardy. There isn’t a clear replacement for him right now, but he may not have helped himself today. We don’t yet know how Mr. Trump feels about what Mr. Mulvaney said. But if past is prelude, if it proves problematic, the president will blame Mr. Mulvaney.
In a news conference later in the morning, Ms. Pelosi said of Mr. Cummings, “He lived the American dream and he wanted it for everyone else. He spoke with unsurpassed clarity and moral integrity when he spoke on the floor.”
On Thursday, the president was in Texas, the vice president and secretary of state in Turkey, and Mr. Mulvaney on his own in the briefing room. One of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers even put out a statement saying the president’s legal team “was not involved.” Here’s how my colleague Katie Rogers, who was in the room, described the scene:
Read more: Elijah E. Cummings, Powerful Democrat Who Investigated Trump, Dies at 68
Reporters knew this was big news right away, and I think you saw the incredulity in the questions that were asked of him. We kept asking the same question in different ways, which was essentially: “How is what you’re telling us not an acknowledgment of something the president has outright denied?” The first time he said it, I emailed our White House team saying, “Did he actually just link Ukraine conspiracy theories to withholding aid?” All of us in the room were trying to figure out if what we were watching was actually happening.
Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, will tell House impeachment investigators on Thursday that President Trump essentially delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat hailed as a powerful moral voice in American politics, died Thursday at the age of 68. His death left a void in the impeachment investigation: Mr. Cummings was chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, one of the committees leading the inquiry.
Mr. Sondland, a Trump campaign donor who has emerged as a central figure in the Ukraine scandal, will testify that he did not understand until later that Mr. Giuliani’s goal may have been an effort “to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”
Rick Perry told the president today that he would resign from his position as energy secretary. His resignation had long been anticipated, even before news emerged of his involvement in efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the energy company Hunter Biden worked for.
According to a copy of his opening statement reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Sondland will say that Mr. Trump refused to take the counsel of his top diplomats, who recommended to him that he meet with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, without any preconditions. The president said that the diplomats needed to satisfy concerns both he and Mr. Giuliani had related to corruption in Ukraine, Mr. Sondland will say.
The Washington Post looked into the taxpayer-funded renovation of Mr. Sondland’s residence in Brussels, which includes more than $400,000 to remodel the kitchen and a $95,000 outdoor “living pod.”
“We were also disappointed by the president’s direction that we involve Mr. Giuliani,” Mr. Sondland will say in an 18-page prepared statement. “Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine.
The Impeachment Briefing is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every weeknight.
Read more: Ambassador to E.U. to Testify That Trump Delegated Ukraine Policy to Giuliani
At noon on Thursday, supporters of Mr. Trump gathered outside the Capitol to rally against Mr. Trump’s impeachment.
Some of headliners were to be expected: Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative John Rutherford, Republican of Florida, and Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union and one of the president’s most dogged defenders,
Others? Well, they certainly have been in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Highlighted for the rally was Jack Posobiec, one of the most prominent promulgators of “Pizzagate,” which held that Hillary Clinton ran a child trafficking operation out of the back of a Washington pizzeria. He also promoted the conspiracy that a young aide at the Democratic National Committee, was murdered for leaking Mrs. Clinton’s emails. In 2017, he disrupted a production of “Julius Caesar” in Central Park, insisting it was promoting Mr. Trump’s assassination.
President Trump repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
