Politico reports:

President Donald Trump’s top envoy to Ukraine told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday of intense efforts by administration officials to secure politically-motivated investigations of Trump’s rivals in exchange for a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president and critical military aid, according to sources in the room for the testimony.

William Taylor prompted sighs and gasps when he read a lengthy 15-page opening statement, two of the sources said.

Another person in the room said Taylor’s statement described “how pervasive the efforts were” among Trump’s allies to convince Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden and another probe centering on a debunked conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 election.

Taylor also described the extent to which military assistance to Ukraine and a potential White House meeting with Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart were tied to those investigations, the source added.

“The body language of the people hearing it was ‘holy s—,’ seriously,” Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said in reference to Taylor’s opening statement.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, characterized the testimony as a “sea change” that “could accelerate” the impeachment inquiry. Another lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, said it was “the most thorough accounting we’ve had of the timeline.”

“I’ll tell you, as a former State Department political appointee, in my experience the difference between career folks and political appointees is the career folks take very good notes,” Malinowski said, hinting that Taylor provided corroboration to back up his recollections. [Continue reading…]

Read Taylor’s opening statement.
Jesse Wegman writes:

What comes through most clearly in Mr. Taylor’s written testimony, which he supplemented with oral testimony to three House committees behind closed doors, is the sheer shock that an American president would be so reckless with both human lives and international relations, all for his own political gain.

Mr. Taylor laid out the real-world stakes of Mr. Trump’s decision to play politics with Ukraine’s military aid. He recalled a visit to the front lines in eastern Ukraine that he and Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine, made in late July, from where they could see armed Russian forces gathered on the other side of a bridge. “Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance,” he wrote.

There are two stories to tell about Ukraine, Mr. Taylor said. One story, the bad one, involves whistle-blowers, back channels and quid pro quos. The other is a positive one — about “a young nation, struggling to break free of its past” and eager to “enjoy a more secure and prosperous life.” [Continue reading…]