WASHINGTON (CN) – Wednesday marks the start of televised testimony as lawmakers work to impeach President Donald Trump, ramping up public scrutiny on an administration that has seen its share of closely watched hearings in Congress.
When former special counsel Robert Mueller testified about his findings on Russian interference in the 2016 election and instances of obstruction into that probe perpetrated by Trump, some 13 million spectators viewed the broadcast, according to Nielsen television ratings.
Another 15.8 million viewers tuned in when Trump’s personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen testified publicly — just before beginning a prison sentence for making hush-money payments at Trump’s direction to women who alleged affairs with Trump.
But the most viewers — some 19.5 million Americans — were drawn in 2017 when former FBI Director James Comey testified that the reason he believed he was fired was so the Trump administration could undermine an effort by the FBI to probe possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Those records will likely be smashed Wednesday as the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees kick off the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry with testimony from George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
Given his role at the State Department and his senior tenure on all matters Ukraine, Kent is widely expected to be a star witness for Democrats. In private testimony, Kent said he was worried about the growing and influential role Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, had on foreign-policy issues relevant to Ukraine.
Kent also corroborated accounts from other officials who testified about a disturbing conversation held in September between Trump and Gordon Sondland, the diplomatic neophyte who was tapped as ambassador to the EU after donating $1 million to the Trump campaign.
According to Kent, Trump told Sondland the U.S. needed Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to make a public statement about launching investigations former Vice President Joe Biden — considered a likely opponent of Trump in the 2020 election, as well as Biden’s son Hunter and Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm where Hunter Biden once sat on the board.
(Interactive timeline by Courthouse News reporters Adam Klasfeld and Brandi Buchman)
The White House had specific ideas about the Zelensky’s announcement, Kent said, including that it mention the start of an investigation of Democratic efforts to undermine the 2016 election, a long-debunked conspiracy theory floated daily by the White House — and some Republican members of Congress.
“POTUS wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,” Kent testified privately.