New testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign

A top diplomat on Wednesday tied President Trump more directly to the effort to pressure Ukraine to probe his political opponents, describing a phone call in which Trump sought information about the status of the investigations he had asked Ukraine to launch one day earlier.

William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, told lawmakers that the phone conversation between the president and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in Kyiv was overheard by one of his aides. Afterward, Sondland told the aide that Trump cared more about investigations of former vice president Joe Biden than other issues in Ukraine, Taylor said.

The startling testimony revealed a new example of Trump’s personal involvement in the Ukraine pressure campaign that touched off the ongoing impeachment inquiry. The probe has produced volumes of information about the actions of top Trump advisers to push Ukraine to pursue the investigations as U.S. security assistance was held up. But the exact role of the president himself has remained an open question.

Until now, Trump has figured most prominently in two key moments: in a May 23 Oval Office meeting, in which he told U.S. officials to confer with his personal attorney Rudolph W. Guiliani on Ukraine policy, and in a July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into investigations of Democrats.

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