Trump’s top aides implicated in impeachment proceeding
US President Donald Trump’s top aides have been implicated in the impeachment looming over his presidency.
Latest testimonies show Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and the US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland were involved in the Ukraine scandal at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
According to the testimonies released on Friday by the House, Giuliani, Mulvaney and Sondland were part of a joint effort pursuing a criminal investigation by Ukraine's judiciary into Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. That, in exchange for the delivery of US Congress-approved aid to Ukraine.
Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, “blurted out” that Mulvaney had approved the meeting if the Ukrainians announced the investigation, said Fiona Hill, a former senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC).
The testimony by Hill, who says she has been threatened to death after she agreed to testify, was corroborated by simultaneously released testimony by another key witness of the scandal, Lt Col Alexander Vindman.
At his testimony to Congress, Sondland said he was regularly in contact with Giuliani about the Ukraine scandal.
Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney have all admitted that all acknowledged the quid pro quo element in the scandal, repeatedly saying that they were acting under Trump’s orders.
In the July 25 phone call, Trump insistently asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find “dirt” on Biden.
Trump has dismissed the Ukraine scandal as a hoax, attacking Democrats for their handling of the impeachment proceedings and questioning the credibility of witnesses who testified against him.
In several of his Twitters posts he called on his followers to read a White House rough transcript of his July 25 phone call with Zelensky on which the impeachment case is being built up by the Congress lawmakers.
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