At impeachment hearing, GOP’s Ratcliffe disputes idea of quid pro quo

Rep. John Ratcliffe Wednesday argued strongly that President Donald Trump was not conditioning American military aid on a request that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

“We’ve established that on July 25, both participants in the call, both presidents, expressly have stated there was no pressure, no demand, no conditions, no blackmail, no corruption,” Ratcliffe said.

The July 25 call is at the center of the impeachment inquiry into the president. The House Intelligence Committee Wednesday held the first public hearing on possible impeachment.

Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican, cited a statement by Zelensky at the hearing that the congressman said proves that Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky, did not know that security assistance was being withheld from Ukraine at the time of the call.

Because Zelensky did not know that military aid was being withheld, Trump could not have imposed conditions on Ukraine for release of the aid, Ratcliffe argued.

“On October 10, President Zelensky held a press marathon with over 300 reporters where he said repeatedly and consistently over hours and hours that he was not aware of a military hold during the July 25 phone call,” Ratcliffe said.

He first made this assertion during hearing time reserved for Mike Conaway, R-Texas, to question witnesses. Conaway gave his questioning time to Ratcliffe. Later, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, yielded the last two minutes of his questioning time to Ratcliffe as well.

In those two minutes, Ratcliffe alleged that there was also no quid pro quo because Zelensky never took any of the actions that Democrats allege were requested by Trump administration officials in exchange for the aid.

“You have to ask yourself, what did President Zelensky actually do to get the aid? The answer is nothing,” Ratcliffe said. “He didn’t do any of the things that House Democrats say that he was being forced and coerced and threatened to do. He didn’t do anything because he didn’t have to.”

And, Ratcliffe and other Republican lawmakers claimed, the military assistance was eventually released, thereby proving that no quid pro quo was fulfilled in order for the aid to be released.

Democrats on the committee rejected this assertion. They cited former Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor’s earlier closed door deposition where he stated that the Trump administration first asked Ukrainian officials to investigate interference in the 2016 election and the involvement of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, with a Ukrainian gas company. In exchange, Trump and Zelensky would meet.

A quid pro quo occurs when someone asks for a favor in return for another favor, which is what Democrats allege Trump did when he asked for investigations from Zelensky into Biden and interference in the 2016 elections in exchange for the military aid.

Later, Taylor testified on Wednesday, Trump decided to temporarily withhold the military aid and conditioned the aid, rather than a White House meeting, on those investigations. Democrats allege that this condition was the quid pro quo in the July 25 phone call and that conditioning Congressional-approved military aid on the investigation of political rivals is an impeachable offense.

Taylor acknowledged that the Ukrainians were concerned about the aid being withheld, but that they did not know that the aid was being withheld until September.

During his questioning time, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Illinois, displayed text messages between Kurt Volker, a former U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and Andriy Yermak, a Zelensky adviser, which included Yermak confirming that as soon as the date for a White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump was set, Zelensky would make an announcement about the investigations.

Quigley claimed those messages were evidence of an initial quid pro quo.

The witnesses who testified in the first televised impeachment today were Taylor, who served as the top U.S. diplomatic official in Ukraine after Marie Yavonovitch was ousted as ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year, and George Kent, the former deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs.

Kent and Taylor first testified behind closed doors a few weeks ago to the Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees.

Each party had 45 minutes to question the witnesses, during which only Chairman Adam Schiff, D-California, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the committee’s top Republican, and the legal counsels for each side questioned Kent and Taylor about their testimony. After those 90 minutes, each member of the committee had five minutes to question the witnesses.

This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 4:43 PM with the headline "At impeachment hearing, GOP’s Ratcliffe disputes idea of quid pro quo."