Kurt Volker, a central figure in the impeachment proceedings, today acknowledged mishandling Rudy Giuliani’s push for Ukrainian officials to open a politically charged investigation, saying he didn’t realize that Joe Biden was the target.
“In hindsight, I now understand that others saw the idea of investigating possible corruption involving the Ukrainian company, Burisma, as equivalent to investigating former Vice President Biden,” Volker, who resigned as the State Department’s lead negotiator for Ukraine in September, told lawmakers Tuesday.
Giuliani’s insistence that Volker and other U.S. officials press for an investigation into Burisma, which hired Biden’s son, Hunter, as a board member in 2014, culminated in the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that launched the impeachment investigation. In his testimony today, Volker distanced himself from other key players, especially U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and denounced the unorthodox request.
“In retrospect, I should have seen that connection differently, and had I done so, I would have raised my own objections,” Volker said in his opening statement before the House Intelligence Committee.
Volker’s opening remarks conflict with accounts from other witnesses. George Kent, one of the State Department’s top officials for Europe, testified that he warned Volker in July that Giuliani wanted an investigation into Biden.
“And Kurt’s reaction, or response to me at that was, well, if there’s nothing there, what does it matter? And if there is something there, it should be investigated,” Kent said during his Oct. 15 deposition. “My response to him was asking another country to investigate a prosecution for political reasons undermines our advocacy of the rule of law.”
Volker, in his closed-door deposition, distinguished between investigating Trump’s political rival and probing whether a corrupt oligarch who owns Burisma had hired the younger Biden in a failed attempt to purchase influence with the U.S. government.
“You know, what were Ukrainian citizens doing, and do you want to look into that?” Volker said on Oct. 3. “Saying investigating Vice President Biden or his son, that is not fine.”
Kent implied in October that Volker did not give an accurate account of his intentions at the time, saying that “the conversation was framed differently” when they discussed the investigations. But Kent blamed Giuliani for interfering with Volker’s ability to advance American policy priorities.
“We both wanted the best for Ukraine,” Kent said of Volker. “We both wanted the best for U.S.-Ukraine relations. He saw Rudy Giuliani as an issue to be addressed, and potentially an ally to be incorporated to get the U.S. president to where we wanted our relationship to be, which is having a meeting.”
Volker renewed that argument on Tuesday. The former envoy, emphasizing that he did not know that Sondland told Ukrainian officials that they had to announce the investigation into Biden in order to get security assistance and a White House meeting, maintained that he believed it was appropriate to urge Ukraine to investigate potential wrongdoing by figures associated with Burisma.
“It has long been U.S. policy under multiple administrations to urge Ukraine to investigate and fight internal corruption,” Volker said. “I was quite comfortable with Ukraine making its own statement, about its own policy, of investigating and fighting corruption at home.”
