Impeachment enquiry: More witnesses to testify!

WASHINGTON: Two US State Department officials were expected to testify before House of Representatives investigators in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump yesterday while lawmakers prepare to weigh rules formalizing the impeachment process ahead.
Ukraine specialists Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson were set to appear before House committees a day after a senior White House official said Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate Democrat rivals raised national security concerns.Later yesterday, the House Rules Committee was scheduled to take up a resolution proposed by House Democrats laying out the procedures as they move forward with impeachment of the Republican president.
The two career diplomats were expected to lay out how State Department officials’ efforts to express support for Ukraine were stymied by the White House, The Washington Post reported, citing the pair’s prepared remarks.
Their closed-door deposition will follow 10 hours of testimony on Tuesday by the White House official, Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who raised the alarm about Trump’s request — during a July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy — for Kiev to investigate Trump’s political rival, former Democratic US Vice President Joe Biden.
The call is at the heart of the congressional inquiry into whether Trump misused the power of his office for personal political gain and, if so, whether that rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours” that merit impeachment and removal from office under the Constitution.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
During the conversation, outlined in a memo released by the White House, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who had served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
He also sought an investigation into a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election. Zelenskiy agreed to Trump’s requests, according to the memo.
Trump made the request after withholding nearly $400 million in security aid approved by Congress to help Ukraine fight Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Vindman, who as a Ukraine specialist listened to the Trump-Zelenskiy call, told lawmakers on Tuesday the readout of the conversation released by the White House left out information he had sought to include, the New York Times reported. — Reuters