WASHINGTON (CN) – Deposition transcripts underpinning the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump could be published in the coming days, fleshing out a week expected to start with four White House officials bucking congressional requests for testimony.
Democrats on the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees are pursuing depositions this week from at least eight witnesses, despite the House being out session. Each witness is believed to have insight into Trump’s July call with Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky and to have reported attempts by administration officials to hide the true record of that call.
The coming testimony, Democrats are poised to argue, will corroborate some of the probative firsthand and secondhand accounts delivered by officials like the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and senior diplomat on Ukraine Bill Taylor.
In closed-door sessions last month, both Vindman and Taylor highlighted concerns to National Security Council attorneys that reportedly suggested Trump was willing to condition the release of U.S. military aid on Ukraine’s compliance with a request to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, Biden’s son Hunter and Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden once held sway as a board member.
Other accounts, including testimony by U.S. senior envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, raised more questions over what level of influence White House insiders, like Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, had on Ukraine-U.S. policy long before the July phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
Monday was expected to feature testimony from National Security Council attorney John Eisenberg; Eisenberg’s second-in-command Michael Ellis; White House aide Robert Blair; and Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s aide, Brian McCormack, but all reportedly plan to skip their private depositions.
Eisenberg was expected to face questions about testimony from Vindman that significantly undercut President Trump’s insistence the call was innocuous if not “perfect.”
After Zelensky and Trump hung up, Vindman testified he went straight to Eisenberg to lodge concerns that Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election where the former vice president is a front-running candidate for the Democrats.
Eisenberg recorded Vindman’s grievances on paper, met with his deputy Michael Ellis and made an executive decision: stow the record of the call into a top-secret server typically used for classified information and restrict to an elite group of administration officials.
Vindman reportedly stopped short of suggesting there was a full-blown cover-up, according to reports citing sources familiar with testimony last week by the Washington Post. But Vindman’s overall discomfort with the exchange deepened after Eisenberg allegedly asked him to keep the call — and where the record of it would be housed — under wraps.
Democrats also seek testimony from McCormack, the former chief of staff to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, in anticipation that his remarks make up for the refusal to testify by Perry and Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought.