Who’s who in the Trump impeachment drama
As the drama in Washington unfolds, and a large cast of characters makes its way to the impeachment inquiry stage, keeping track of who is testifying during the public hearings and whom they are talking about is already getting complicated.
One day their names may go down in history alongside John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, John Dean and Monica Lewinsky, but for now they are new — and also, complicating matters, some of them are Ukrainian.
In order to keep track of an ever-expanding list, Yahoo News has put together a roundup of the major (and particularly interesting minor) players and what is known about their roles.
Click on the key players below for more details.
Donald J. Trump
An avid consumer of right-wing media sources, President Trump is a regular purveyor of what others consider to be disproven conspiracy theories. Speaking by phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, he alluded to one of those, asking that Ukraine investigate the Bidens for Hunter’s role at Burisma Holdings and Joe Biden’s role in the firing of Viktor Shokin.
He also alluded to another unproven conspiracy theory: that Ukraine, not Russia, was involved in efforts to influence the 2016 election by helping Hillary Clinton. Despite a lack of evidence, Trump has also expressed his belief that a hacked computer server belonging to the Democratic National Committee is being kept in Ukraine.
There is no evidence that any of the above is true, yet according to the summary notes of the July 25 call released by the White House, Trump is quoted as saying: “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike …,” later adding, “The server, they say Ukraine has it.”
Trump has described his call with Zelensky as “perfect.” At the same time, he has attempted to keep members of his administration from testifying before House investigators and has called for the whistleblower who flagged his call with Zelensky to be publicly outed.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk
After a popular uprising removed his predecessor from power, Arseniy Yatsenyuk became prime minister of Ukraine in 2014.
The Obama administration tried to support Yatsenyuk’s government as it attempted to stand strong against Russian influence in Ukraine. But U.S. officials had some concerns about Yatsenyuk, specifically that he was not following through on promises to root out corruption in the country, and then-Vice President Joe Biden began to pressure him to do so.
Viktor Shokin
Appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Viktor Shokin has spent 35 years in government, some under Soviet rule and some in an independent Ukraine.
This was a controversial appointment, given that many saw him as hindering rather than helping the anticorruption fight. There were public protests against him on the streets of Ukraine and expressions of concern by the Obama administration and a number of European Union nations.
Joe Biden
In 2014, when he was still vice president, Joe Biden was given responsibility for overseeing American interests in Ukraine at a time when Russia sought to destabilize the country, and he focused on rooting out corruption and increasing transparency.
Biden later threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine until anticorruption reforms were implemented, including the removal of Viktor Shokin, who resigned soon after.
In what has become a much-replayed video clip, Biden describes that interaction with Ukraine’s leaders: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.
“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Hunter Biden
The former vice president’s son Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, in April 2014. Burisma was one of the entities the U.S. believed should be receiving more scrutiny from Viktor Shokin for mismanagement and corruption going back several years. In fact, when Joe Biden urged the firing of Shokin, it was because the prosecutor was not investigating Burisma, among other entities. Shokin’s firing was detrimental, not helpful, to Burisma. Still, conspiracy theories began to crop up in far-right corners of the internet that Biden withheld aid from Ukraine to help his son.
Similarly, Hunter Biden served on the board of a Chinese private equity fund while his father was vice president, leading President Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to accuse the younger Biden of earning “millions” off his father’s position. Trump has often claimed the younger Biden received “$1.5 billion” from his dealings with the equity fund. In truth, Hunter Biden owns a 10 percent stake in the fund, which received just $460,000 in capital from the Bank of China. Hunter Biden’s attorney has said his client was not paid for his work while Joe Biden was in office, acquiring a minority stake only after the Obama administration ended, and that he has not seen any money yet from that investment, certainly not the numbers cited by Trump and Giuliani.
Peter Schweizer
If the conspiracy theory at the center of the current impeachment inquiry — that former Vice President Joe Biden had Viktor Shokin fired because he sought to expose corruption at Burisma Holdings — did not originate with author Peter Schweizer, it was certainly widely spread by him.
Schweizer is senior editor at large at the conservative website Breitbart News and the president of the Government Accountability Institute, established by Steve Bannon expressly to enter opposition research into the public conversation. It was Schweizer’s 2018 book “Secret Empires” that included a chapter called “Bidens in Ukraine,” which implied that Joe Biden had somehow shut down the Burisma investigation right before he left office in 2017.
There was no evidence given in the book that this was true, and the allegation has since been disproved by numerous news outlets.
John Solomon
A former Washington Post reporter, John Solomon has, over the years, worked for overtly conservative publications. Most recently, he has written opinion columns for the Hill.
Starting in the spring of this year, he wrote many stories linking the Bidens to Ukrainian corruption. He also suggested that Hillary Clinton should be investigated for working with the Ukrainians to steal the 2016 election. By March of this year, Donald Trump was tweeting links to Solomon’s reporting.
Volodymyr Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, like the current American one, is a television entertainment veteran. An actor and comic, Zelensky played a president on a sitcom and parlayed that into the actual presidency despite having no prior political experience.
Like every modern Ukrainian leader, he is trying to navigate his country’s contentious relationship with Russia, and is dependent on American aid to resist Vladimir Putin’s intervention.
In a July 25 telephone conversation, Trump pressed Zelensky for a “favor,” asking that an investigation be opened into the Bidens. That conversation took place one week after Trump ordered a hold on $400 million in previously approved American military aid to Ukraine. Trump also urged Zelensky to speak with Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.
Donald J. Trump
An avid consumer of right-wing media sources, President Trump is a regular purveyor of what others consider to be disproven conspiracy theories. Speaking by phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, he alluded to one of those, asking that Ukraine investigate the Bidens for Hunter’s role at Burisma Holdings and Joe Biden’s role in the firing of Viktor Shokin.
He also alluded to another unproven conspiracy theory: that Ukraine, not Russia, was involved in efforts to influence the 2016 election by helping Hillary Clinton. Despite a lack of evidence, Trump has also expressed his belief that a hacked computer server belonging to the Democratic National Committee is being kept in Ukraine.
There is no evidence that any of the above is true, yet according to the summary notes of the July 25 call released by the White House, Trump is quoted as saying: “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike …,” later adding, “The server, they say Ukraine has it.”
Trump has described his call with Zelensky as “perfect.” At the same time, he has attempted to keep members of his administration from testifying before House investigators and has called for the whistleblower who flagged his call with Zelensky to be publicly outed.
Rudy Giuliani
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has done personal legal work for Trump relating to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, helped promote the Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton Ukraine conspiracy theories.
It was recently reported that in March 2019, Giuliani gave a packet of “evidence” to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo detailing those allegations, and setting out a plan to spread the story “including segments being placed on Fox News.”
Also in the packet was documentation of some investigations that Giuliani had done in the past year (at whose behest is unclear), including a transcript of a Skype call he had with Viktor Shokin.
Marie Yovanovitch
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was recalled by Trump in May. While in office, she called for Kiev to take a stronger stand against corruption, but Rudy Giuliani called for her to be fired because he saw her as blocking his efforts to convince Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
When she was suddenly recalled from her post, Democrats in Congress described the move as a “political hit job.” In her deposition before the House Intelligence Committee, she testified that she was fired based on “false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”
Yuri Lutsenko
Viktor Shokin’s successor as Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko did not take well to Yovanovitch’s calls for rooting out corruption, accusing her of obstructing ongoing inquiries. He eventually came to the conclusion, however, that Biden “did not violate anything.”
This reversal came as a surprise to Rudy Giuliani, who had met with Lutsenko early in 2019. Lutsenko stepped down from his post in August.
The whistleblower
An intelligence official who is not employed at the White House and who was not listening in on the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the unnamed whistleblower sent a complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community after becoming alarmed by accounts of the call relayed by people with knowledge of its content.
The complaint was filed on Aug. 12, days after the whistleblower approached the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to voice concerns about Trump’s call with Zelensky.
Mike Pence
Originally scheduled to attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s May 20 inauguration, Vice President Mike Pence canceled his trip to Kiev at the last minute after receiving orders from President Trump.
According to the Washington Post, Pence was also told by Trump to inform Ukrainian officials that American military aid was being withheld.
When confronted with the whistleblower’s report of his July 25 call, Trump told reporters at a news conference at the United Nations to “ask for VP Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple conversations also.” Pence has since denied that Trump sought a foreign investigation of his political rival in order to help with his chances of being reelected.
Andriy Yermak
A close friend and aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Andriy Yermak is said to have met with Rudy Giuliani in person in early August of this year, just weeks after President Trump told Zelensky that Giuliani was looking for information about the Bidens.
It was also Yermak who texted with former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker about scheduling a Zelensky visit to the White House, an invitation that Yermak and Zelensky badly wanted as a sign of support from the U.S.
Nancy Pelosi
Having resisted calls for an impeachment inquiry into Trump for nearly a full year after the Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives in 2018, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally relented in September.
As details emerged about the whistleblower’s complaint and Trump’s call with Zelensky, she announced that the inquiry would begin. She accused Trump of “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
Adam Schiff
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has come under fire from President Trump and his Republican supporters for paraphrasing the contents of Trump’s call with Zelensky, likening it to a Mafia shakedown, as well as his false assertion that his staff had never met with the whistleblower prior to the filing of the complaint against Trump.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given Schiff, a former prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney, the lead role in the House impeachment inquiry.
Kurt Volker
Former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker was among the first to give a deposition to Democratic investigators that included a text message thread of high-level conversations about what Trump is alleged to have expected of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a condition for U.S. support.
In one text sent by Volker to Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak hours after the July 25 phone call, he tells Yermak that he had “heard from White House — assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.” After giving his testimony, Volker resigned — twice: first, from his State Department post and subsequently as head of the McCain Institute. Then he got married.
William B. Taylor Jr.
The U.S. chargé d’affaires in Ukraine, William “Bill” Taylor is a career diplomat who, in text messages with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, appeared concerned by the rationale for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for an investigation into the Bidens. “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” he texted at one point.
In his deposition with House investigators, Taylor testified that it was his “clear understanding” that Ukraine was told it would not receive U.S. military aid “until the president [Zelensky] committed to pursue the investigation” of the Bidens.
Gordon Sondland
Before being appointed U.S. ambassador to the European Union despite having no prior diplomatic experience, Gordon Sondland donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. In text exchanges provided to House investigators, Sondland sharply disagreed with Taylor’s conclusion of a quid pro quo agreement between Trump and Zelensky. “I Believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind…I suggest we stop this back and forth by text.”
In addition, Sondland and Volker appear to have worked together on a draft of a statement for Zelensky in which he would announce he was investigating the accusations against Hunter Biden. No statement was ever released. In an amended deposition he gave to House investigators, however, Sondland changed his story, admitting that he did have knowledge that Trump sought a quid pro quo with his Ukrainian counterpart in order to procure an investigation of his political rival Joe Biden.
Joseph Maguire
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire received the whistleblower complaint on his second day on the job.
Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Sept. 26, he defended his decision to not send that complaint to Congress, saying he had followed procedure and brought it to the Office of White House Counsel, which had advised him that the complaint involved executive privilege. He also defended the whistleblower, saying he too had followed the correct procedure, refuting accusations from the White House that the whistleblower had circumvented proper channels.
Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas
Florida-based businessmen Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas were hired by Rudy Giuliani to help investigate the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine. Soviet-born naturalized U.S. citizens, the two men were both committed Republicans who funneled donations to what appeared to be a Ukrainian natural gas company called Global Energy Producers, whose $325,000 donation to a pro-Trump super-PAC attracted the scrutiny of watchdog groups.
They were arrested on Sept. 9 at Dulles Airport as they boarded a flight to Vienna with one-way tickets and were charged with campaign finance violations. The two men lobbied members of Congress to try to get U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired. In early November, Parnas announced he was replacing his Trump-connected lawyer and had agreed to cooperate with House investigators.
Sam Kislin
A philanthropist who has donated to and done business with both President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, Sam Kislin has been investigated by the FBI for alleged connections to the Russian mob, but no charges have ever been brought against him.
He has extensive contacts in Ukraine and is thought to have made introductions for Giuliani. All three House committees involved in the impeachment inquiry have sent requests to Kislin for documents that could shed light on interactions between Trump, Giuliani and the Ukrainians.
William Barr
According to the notes released by the White House about President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky, Trump stated that Attorney General William Barr could help “get to the bottom” of suspicions about the Bidens, and requested that Zelensky coordinate with him. Barr also appears in the whistleblower’s complaint multiple times, with the whistleblower saying the attorney general “appears to be involved” in the pressure Ukraine received from the Trump administration to investigate the Bidens.
Barr has not recused himself from a Justice Department review of the merits of the whistleblower’s complaint, and an internal DOJ review has concluded that Trump’s request of Zelensky did not violate campaign finance laws.
Alexander Vindman
The top Ukraine expert at the National Security Council, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman told House impeachment investigators that he listened in on President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was deeply concerned by what he said was Trump’s clear attempt at establishing an illegal quid pro quo. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where the gain would be for the president in investigating the son of a political opponent,” Vindman said in his deposition.
Vindman was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union. He emigrated to the United States when he was 3, and went on to become a decorated U.S. Army officer before being assigned to the NSC.
Daniel Goldman
A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Daniel Goldman will handle the bulk of the questioning of witnesses for Democrats during the public hearing phase of the impeachment inquiry.
Goldman, who worked as a legal analyst at MSNBC before agreeing to lead the Intelligence Committee investigation of President Trump’s ties to Russia, has already been involved in questioning witnesses during closed-door hearings over the last month.
Steve Castor
The chief investigative counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Steve Castor will question witnesses on behalf of Republicans during the public hearing phase of the impeachment inquiry.
He practiced commercial litigation in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., prior to taking a central role in investigations on subjects ranging from the use of steroids in professional sports to the Obama Justice Department’s refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena in the Fast and Furious “gun-walking” matter.
George Kent
George Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s European and Eurasian bureau, is a career diplomat who has served under five U.S. presidents.
In his deposition, he detailed Rudy Giuliani’s “false claims” made against Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine recalled by Trump in May.
Tim Morrison
A top Russia and Europe expert on the president’s National Security Council, Tim Morrison is an ally of ousted national security adviser John Bolton.
He listened in on President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The White House sought to keep Morrison from testifying, but he announced last month that he will leave his current position.
Fiona Hill
An official at the National Security Council, Fiona Hill told House investigators in a deposition that former national security adviser John Bolton directed her to alert lawyers at the NSC about a campaign by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to procure a Ukrainian investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill, according to her testimony.
Jennifer Williams
An aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Jennifer Williams has agreed to testify in the impeachment inquiry despite objections from the White House.
Williams, who was a longtime State Department staffer before becoming an adviser to Pence, was on President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and is reported to have been concerned by what was discussed.
David Hale
The third-ranking official at the State Department, David Hale is believed to have told House investigators that political considerations factored into the decision by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to withhold public support for Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Trump recalled Yovanovitch in May, and Hale sought to steer clear of the matter.
Laura Cooper
The deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Laura Cooper testified in her deposition to House investigators that Ukrainian officials were alarmed as early as August about the Trump administration’s decision to withhold military aid.
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