Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., has returned to the Green Mountain State this week during a weeklong congressional recess, but the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is only intensifying in Washington.
Staff on the House Intelligence Committee, of which Welch is a member, will be interviewing former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, this week.
And on Monday, the committee, which is leading the impeachment inquiry, subpoenaed the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget for documents related to Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine in July.
Welch, Vermont’s sole representative in the House, said he’s already seen enough evidence to be convinced that the president committed an impeachable offense. He believes Congress’ Democratically-controlled lower chamber will eventually hold a vote on impeachment.
The Intelligence Committee is still working to find more information about the relationship between the nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine Trump stalled in July and his request to the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who is the leading Democratic candidate for president.
“The more people who have inside knowledge of the scheme by the Trump administration to basically leverage military aid for an investigation is extremely relevant and that’s what we’re looking to find,” Welch said Monday.
“The subpoenas have been going out this week and it’s all about getting information about what that connection was between delayed aid and the president’s request for Ukrainian campaign assistance.”
Trump has blasted the impeachment inquiry as partisan and on Oct. 3 called it “The Greatest Witch Hunt in the history of our Country!”
On Friday, Trump told reporters that his efforts to convince Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company, were not about politics, but rooting out corruption.
“Let me tell you, I’m only interested in corruption,” Trump said, according to CNN. “I don’t care about politics. But I do care about corruption, and this whole thing is about corruption. … This is about corruption, and this is not about politics.”
In a closed-door hearing on Friday, Welch’s committee heard from Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, about the whistleblower complaint that set off the impeachment investigation.
That complaint alleged that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, and that White House staff attempted to block details of the president’s call with the Ukrainian leader from being released to the public.
While committee members have declined to discuss details of the meeting, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said in a statement on Friday that Atkinson discussed “the reasons why he found the whistleblower complaint to be both urgent and credible.”
Last month, White House officials released a transcript of the call, which Democrats say backs up the whistleblower’s complaint. Trump and many Republicans on Capitol Hill say the recording is exculpatory because there is no explicit quid pro quo between the leaders.
On Thursday, the intelligence committee also took testimony from Kurt Volker, the former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, who released text messages to the panel that revealed details of efforts to coordinate the call between Trump and Zelensky.
The texts show how some U.S. and Ukrainian diplomats believed Trump was trying to use military aid or a meeting with Zelensky as leverage for political investigations.
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, said in a message to Volker and Sonland, the ambassador to the E.U.
Sondland said he believed Taylor was “incorrect” about Trump’s intentions.
“The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” he wrote. “The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.”
[Listen to VTDigger’s Deeper Dig podcast from Sept. 27, on Vermont officials and the Trump impeachment inquiry.]
Welch said Monday that the texts released by Volker “moved the dial in showing that the president’s desires were understood by top state department people who unfortunately sought to assist him.”
Sondland will be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
On Thursday, the committee will interview Yovanovich, the former ambassador to Ukraine who Trump ousted after she blocked efforts to convince Ukrainian leaders to investigate Biden, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Welch, who is appearing at events in Vermont this week with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said that as the House moves forward with its impeachment inquiry it has to do so “carefully and methodically” but also “promptly.”
“I don’t want it to drag on, I think the speaker doesn’t. I know Adam Schiff doesn’t,” Welch said.
“But we’ve got to gather what evidence is there to make the case.”
