Volker Lied to Congress: What We Can Prove

 

So, to give a very brief summary of Volker's testimony to Congress, he expressed the view that Trump and Giuliani were motivated by a good-faith desire to fight corruption in Ukraine, that he talked Giuliani out of investigating the Bidens, that Burisma and the 2016 election were appropriate topics of investigation, that he had no idea that investigating Burisma was code for investigating Biden, that the Ukrainians decided against making any sort of announcement because they were convinced of US support, and that any delays in military aid were simply bureaucratic snags and in no way significant.

All of which makes one want to ask him other questions.  Does he believe in the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny?  Has he .ever seen a jackalope?  Can I interest him in some ocean front property in Arizona?  I have compared former Ambassador Marie Yovanavitch to a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union caught in a gangland war between rival bootleggers, lecturing them about the evils of the Demon Rum and trying to figure out which of them are the good guys.  Volker, by contrast, comes across as Polyanna or Forrest Gump.  Or even Chauncy Gardner.  In short, either a seasoned diplomat is extraordinarily naive, or he was lying.  Others at the time questioned his testimony, one even presenting a detailed chart comparing Volker's testimony to other witnesses.  My own take during the impeachment was that while I had no doubt Volker was telling the truth when he said he did not know what took place in the Trump/Zelensky call until it was released and might be telling the truth that he did not know military aid was linked to investigations, it surpassed belief that he did not link Burisma to Biden.  

So what do we know now?

Well the released tape clearly proves that Volker was lying about the telephone conference he arranged between Giuliani and Andrei Yermak.  He said during congressional testimony that the meeting was brief and consisted mostly of introductions.  In fact, it was about 40 minutes long.  It begins solely between Volker and Yermak with fairly conventional congratulations on his win.  Volker then brings on Giuliani, who begins with fairly conventional congratulations and expressions of concern about corruption.  And then it segues off into some very strange territory.  Giuliani asks about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election -- not, in fairness to Giuliani, anything so insane as asking if Ukraine had the server.  He claimed that the US embassy was asking for "dirt" on Trump and his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and that dirt was produced, mostly in the form of the "black ledger" of payoffs to Manafort, that was submitted to the FBI and the press.  He also briefly mentions Alexandra Chalupa.  

None of this is completely insane.  The Ukrainians did publish a "black ledger" of payoffs by the pro-Russian party to a wide variety of individuals, including Manafort.  They provided evidence of payoffs to Manafort to the FBI and the New York Times.  It seems most likely that their motive was to get Manafort fired, which he was.  But none of this is illegal or even improper. It would be illegal if this was done at the behest of the US embassy to sway the election, but there is no evidence of that.  Alexandra Chalupa has been accused (by Politico, a reputable publication) of coordinating campaign activities between the DNC and the Ukrainian embassy, but there is not enough evidence to prove or disprove the accusation. 

Giuliani then says that during these investigations he also learned about Biden getting Shokin fired. This was of interest to him, but secondary.  His primary interest was the 2016 election.  But he makes clear that both the election and Biden are to be investigated.  There is also a single stray mention of Burisma (p. 3 out of 7 in the Buzzfeed transcript), and an investigation that was started and discontinued about three times, but this was clearly not a priority.  He also makes some comments about Soros being behind all of this that is clearly nuts.  Yermak gives assurances that there will be "investigations" not defined beyond that. The call concludes with Volker informing Giuliani of the upcoming phone call with Trump and recommending the Ukrainians give assurances of their investigation.  The phone call took place three days later.

Clearly, then, Volker was well aware of Trump's interesting in investigating Biden as well as the election. He knew that his July 19 conversation with Giuliani did not convince Giuliani to drop the subject of the Biden investigation. Though it is doubtless true that Volker did not see the call readout until it became public knowledge, he had a good idea what to expect on the call -- and what to expected included at least a coded promise to investigate Biden.  He probably did not anticipate that Trump would do anything so insane as to suggest that the Ukrainians were hiding the "server," ie, the DNC server that was hacked.  But then again, Trump did not engage in any of the insane rants about Soros that Giuliani did.  Possibly when Zelensky said that the conversation had gone well, Volker may have taken that to mean the topic of Biden had unexpectedly not come up.  

On the other hand, and by his admission, Volker spent much of August working with Yermak to prepare the announcement of "investigations."  The planned announcement was apparently limited to the election and Burisma and did not directly name the Biden. We now know for certain that Volker was lying when he said he thought Giuliani had dropped the subject of Biden.  Could he have been telling the truth when he said he did not know that Burisma was code for Biden?  Giuliani's mention of Burisma in the recording is too garbled to make much sense.  On the other hand, the basic account of what Giuliani wanted had appeared in the New York Times in early May, 2019.  Might Volker have been unaware of the articles?  Well, his deposition testimony (p. 237) revealed a text from William Taylor, apparently to Volker, dated May 26, 2019 in which he expressed reluctance to serve as acting ambassador to Ukraine because of the reports in the New York Times, which clearly linked Burisma to the Bidens.  So Volker knew as early as May that Giuliani was actively trying to link the Bidens to Burisma, and he knew that on July 22, three days after his push-back and three days before the conversation with Trump that Giuliani had not let go of the subject.

We also know that other people managed to make the connection. For instance, when Tim Morrison, the parties' contact with the National Security Counsel, first heard of Burisma, he did not know what it was so he ran a Google search. He learned of Burisma's tie to Hunter Biden and understood very well.  Then there is the matter of the July 10 meeting at the National Security Counsel.  Volker's initial testimony was that the meeting was disappointing because it went into too much minor detail, but that nothing inappropriate happened. At the public hearing he said that Sondland made some inappropriate but generic requests for investigations.  This is contradicted by the testimony of one witness present who said that Sondland raised the subject of the Bidens and another who said he only discussed Burisma, but that it was obvious that Burisma was code for the Bidens.

In short, for Volker not to link Burisma to the Bidens requires an almost superhuman degree of naivity that one does not expect to see in a seasoned diplomat.

The point-by-point chart comparing Volker's testimony to the others raises another interesting question (pp. 26-31) not specifically disproven by the tape -- when did the attempt to pressure the Ukrainians for a statement end?  Volker says (pp. 259-260) that by mid-August he and the Ukrainians agrees that they should not announce investigations and dropped the subject.  He gave as the reason for dropping the investigation that the Ukrainian were becoming increasingly confident of US support, such as John Bolton's August 27, 2019 visit to Ukraine.  Other witnesses did not agree.  Ambassador Taylor in particular disagreed.  He testified that on September 8, 2019, Ambassador Sondland reported that Trump was adamant on the need for a public announcement of investigations.  Even after the hold on military aid was lifted on September 11, 2019, Volker remained concerned that the Ukrainians might make the announcement and continued to urge them not to, lest they jeopardize bipartisan support for Ukraine. Only with the release of the transcript of the conversation between Zelensky and Trump did he become confident no announcement would take place.  Taylor's aide, James Holmes, generally confirms this account.  Sondland mentions continued calls for the announcement by Trump.

Finally, there is the matter of military aid to Ukraine.  It is undisputed that Taylor informed Volker and Sondland of the hold in military aid on July 18, 2019.  Taylor learned of the hold from Tim Morrison, the National Security Council official who he reported to, and specifically learned that the hold was at the direction of the Office of Budget Management (OMB) on orders from the President.  In other words, Taylor and Morrison knew at once that this was not a routine bureaucratic hold, but came from the highest possible authority.  Taylor did not know the reason for the hold, nor did he link it to the demand for "investigations."  He informed both Volker and Sondland of the hold.  It is not clear from the testimony whether he told them that the hold came from the highest levels. Giuliani did not mention military aid in the July 19, 2019 telephone call. As a private citizen, it seems most likely he did not know of the hold.

The first person to expressly link military aid to "investigations" was Gordon Sondland in a Warsaw meeting on September 1, 2019.  President Trump was originally scheduled to attend the meeting, but cancelled due to Hurricane Dorian.  At the meeting, Sondland took Zelensky aside and told him that military aid as well as a White House meeting depended on announcing "investigations."  Tim Morrison was present for this conversation and reported it to Taylor.  We have e-mails and reports of conversations between Taylor and Sondland about the link between military aid and "investigations."  There is no direct evidence that Volker was involved in these conversations.  We also have Sondland's own testimony that he was not acting on specific orders when he told the Ukrainians that military aid was tied to investigations, but giving the conclusion that he had reached on his own.  This might have cast Sondland as the villain of the story, except that he then talked to Trump and was told that Trump wanted "nothing, no quid pro quo" or "I am asking nothing, I am offering nothing," but still wanted the announcement.  By this time, the scandal had gone public, so this sounds very much like a confirmation that seeks to maintain plausible deniability.

However, there is nothing in the new testimony that can prove Volker knew anything about military aid being tied to any sort of investigation.  There is undeniable proof that he knew Giuliani continued to seek an investigation of Biden after Volker pushed back on the subject, and that Volker lied in his testimony to Congress.  And there is every reason to infer from the phone call that Giuliani had passed on his interest in the Bidens to Trump, and that Trump was seeking investigation of the Bidens as well as Burisma.