Text Messages Detail Trump’s Pressure On Ukraine

Business Insider reports:

The US House Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign Affairs Committees released a trove of text messages between top US diplomats’ revealing their internal turmoil regarding Ukraine, on Thursday night.

The content of the messages range from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, military aid to Ukraine, and, investigations, among other topics.

The messages are between Bill Taylor, Chargé d’Affaires at the US Embassy in Ukraine; Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy to Ukraine; Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, and aids to the Ukrainian president.

CNN reports:

They show how cognizant the Ukrainians were about the importance of the election investigation to Trump and Giuliani’s role. 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.

“Heard from the 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,” Volker said via text to the Ukrainian adviser on the morning of July 25.

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.

The Washington Post reports:



The whistleblower portrayed Volker as working with European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland to try to run interference between Ukrainian officials and Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was pressing for Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden.

The text messages suggest that Volker and Sondland might more accurately be described as trying, at times, to effect what Giuliani — and Trump — wanted to see: An investigation into a completely unfounded attempt to link Ukraine to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee network in 2016 and a probe of Biden and work his son Hunter did for an energy company called Burisma Holdings.