The House Intelligence Committee overseeing the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump released transcripts of depositions Saturday from two officials who will be questioned in public hearings next week.
Congressional investigators also met Saturday in a closed-door session with Mark Sandy, a longtime career official with the Office of Management and Budget, who could provide valuable information about the U.S. delay of about $400 million in aid to Ukraine last summer.
The transcripts released Saturday were from previous closed-door depositions with former National Security Council official Tim Morrison and Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence. Morrison and Williams are scheduled to be questioned in public Tuesday by the House panel.
At the heart of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against the president is whether Trump withheld needed military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential opponent of Trump’s in the 2020 presidential election, and his son, Hunter Biden. No wrongdoing by either Biden has been substantiated.
He also used the term the Burisma “bucket,” which included investigations into the Bidens, and the role of Democrats in the 2016 election. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma.
Morrison also described witnessing an exchange between Sondland and Andriy Yermak, an aide to the Ukraine president, at a summit in Warsaw.
He testified that Sondland told him Yermak?: “What could help them move the aid was if the prosecutor general would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.” The prosecutor general is Ukraine’s top legal official.
“It was the first time something like this had been injected as a condition on the release of the assistance,” Morrison? said in his deposition, adding he “did not understand why Ambassador Sondland would be involved in Ukraine policy, often without the involvement of our duly appointed Chief of Mission, Ambassador Bill Taylor.”
The transcript also describes a Sept. 11 meeting, which Morrison said he did not attend but was briefed about, in which Vice President Pence and Ohio Senator Rob Portman “convinced the president that the aid should be disbursed immediately,” and that it was “the appropriate and prudent thing to do.”