The final House impeachment hearing of the week gets underway Thursday morning with joint testimony by Fiona Hill, a former Europe and Russia expert at the White House, and David Holmes, an embassy official in Kyiv.
Ms. Hill is expected to describe her concerns about the Ukraine pressure campaign and those of John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser. Mr. Holmes will be asked about a cellphone conversation he overheard in which President Trump asked an ambassador about investigations he wanted Ukraine to announce.
The basics: Who, what, when and how to watch.
Who: Ms. Hill and Mr. Holmes will testify during a morning session. There is no afternoon session scheduled.
What: The House Intelligence Committee, led by its chairman, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, will continue to examine the case for impeaching Mr. Trump. The Republican minority, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, will again work to poke holes in testimony implicating the president.
When and Where: The morning proceedings start at 9 Eastern in the House Ways and Means Committee chambers. It will most likely last until the afternoon.
How to Watch: The New York Times will stream the testimony live, and a team of reporters in Washington will provide real-time context and analysis of the events on Capitol Hill. Follow along at nytimes.com, starting a few minutes before 9.
Bolton saw Giuliani as a ‘hand grenade’ in Ukraine policy, a White House aide will testify.
Ms. Hill is expected to testify that Mr. Bolton expressed serious concerns about the pressure campaign on Ukraine led by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who was pushing Ukraine to investigate Democrats. In previous, closed-door testimony, she described a July 10 White House meeting during which Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, raised the investigations in front of Ukrainian officials and said there was a deal to grant their new president a White House meeting with Mr. Trump if he agreed to announce them.
Disturbed, Mr. Bolton abruptly ended the meeting and instructed Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers about what Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, were up to. Mr. Bolton told Ms. Hill that he was not “part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” she testified. Later, Ms. Hill said that Mr. Bolton told her that “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”
Mr. Sondland said in Wednesday’s hearing that Ms. Hill’s account of the July 10 meeting does not “square with my own.”
An embassy staff member who overheard a Trump phone call at a restaurant will describe the scene.
Mr. Holmes will testify that he overheard a phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland during a lunch in Kyiv. In closed-door testimony, Mr. Holmes told lawmakers last week that he overheard Mr. Trump, who was speaking loudly, asking Mr. Sondland whether Mr. Zelensky was “going to do the investigation.” Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and political donor turned ambassador, told Mr. Trump that Mr. Zelensky “loves your ass” and would conduct the investigation and do “anything you ask him to,” according to Mr. Holmes’s statement.
In Mr. Holmes’s account, Mr. Sondland told him that Mr. Trump cares only about “big stuff that benefits the president” like the “Biden investigation” into the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Sondland largely confirmed that account on Wednesday but said he did not recall specifically mentioning Mr. Biden. Democrats believe the conversation helps establish that the president was preoccupied with persuading Ukraine to publicly commit to investigations that Mr. Trump wanted.
Before then, catch up on some important background on the impeachment inquiry.
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Both witnesses have already appeared for closed-door depositions in the inquiry. Read transcripts or key excerpts from their testimony here: Ms. Hill, Mr. Holmes.
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Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured Mr. Zelensky to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including the former vice president. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
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A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
transcript
Who Are the Main Characters in the Whistle-Blower’s Complaint?
President Trump’s personal lawyer. The prosecutor general of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s son. These are just some of the names mentioned in the whistle-blower’s complaint. What were their roles? We break it down.
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Congressman: “Sir, let me repeat my question: Did you ever speak to the president about this complaint?” Congress is investigating allegations that President Trump pushed a foreign government to dig up dirt on his Democratic rivals. “It’s just a Democrat witch hunt. Here we go again.” At the heart of an impeachment inquiry is a nine-page whistle-blower complaint that names over two dozen people. Not counting the president himself, these are the people that appear the most: First, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani. According to documents and interviews, Giuliani has been involved in shadowy diplomacy on behalf of the president’s interests. He encouraged Ukrainian officials to investigate the Biden family’s activities in the country, plus other avenues that could benefit Trump like whether the Ukrainians intentionally helped the Democrats during the 2016 election. It was an agenda he also pushed on TV. “So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden.” “Of course I did!” A person Giuliani worked with, Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general. He pushed for investigations that would also benefit Giuliani and Trump. Lutsenko also discussed conspiracy theories about the Bidens in the U.S. media. But he later walked back his allegations, saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. This is where Hunter Biden comes in, the former vice president’s son. He served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company run by this guy, who’s had some issues with the law. While Biden was in office, he along with others, called for the dismissal of Lutsenko’s predecessor, a prosecutor named Viktor Shokin, whose office was overseeing investigations into the company that Hunter Biden was involved with. Shokin was later voted out by the Ukrainian government. Lutsenko replaced him, but was widely criticized for corruption himself. When a new president took office in May, Volodymyr Zelensky, Zelensky said that he’d replace Lutsenko. Giuliani and Trump? Not happy. They viewed Lutsenko as their ally. During a July 25 call between Trump and the new Ukrainian president, Trump defended him, saying, “I heard you had a prosecutor who is very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.” In that phone call, Trump also allegedly asked his counterpart to continue the investigation into Joe Biden, who is his main rival in the 2020 election. Zelensky has publicly denied feeling pressured by Trump. “In other words, no pressure.” And then finally, Attorney General William Barr, who also came up in the July 25 call. In the reconstructed transcript, Trump repeatedly suggested that Zelensky’s administration could work with Barr and Giuliani to investigate the Bidens and other matters of political interest to Trump. Since the whistle-blower complaint was made public, Democrats have criticized Barr for dismissing allegations that Trump had violated campaign finance laws during his call with Zelensky and not passing along the complaint to Congress. House Democrats have now subpoenaed several people mentioned in the complaint, as an impeachment inquiry into the president’s conduct continues.
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works, and here’s why political influence in foreign policy matters.
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House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
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Read about the Democrats’ rules to govern impeachment proceedings.
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