Donald Trump lashed out at the impeachment inquiry against him on Tuesday as a career diplomat who has fought corruption in Ukraine prepared to testify behind closed doors to lawmakers investigating the president.
George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for U.S. policy toward six former Soviet republics including the Ukraine, arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning as the latest witness in the inquiry, following 10 hours of closed-door testimony by former National Security Council aide Fiona Hill on Tuesday.
Trump complained about the lack of transparency.
‘Democrats are allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings. If Republicans ever did this they would be excoriated by the Fake News. Let the facts come out from the charade of people, most of whom I do not know, they are interviewing for 9 hours each, not selective leaks,’ he tweeted.
President Trump complained about the lack of transparency in the impeachment inquiry
Trump’s complaint came as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent arrived on Capitol Hill to testify behind closed doors
Republican lawmakers also have complained about the Democrats’ handling of the impeachment process, arguing the interview transcripts from the witnesses should be released.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Monday night that Democrats ‘are going to be releasing all of these transcripts’ – although he did not give a time frame during his talk at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
He said he wanted time to get all the necessary interviews conducted and argued witnesses should not be able to hear another witness’s testimony in order to avoid any coordination on their testimony.
‘I’m sure the White House would like nothing more than to be able to get their story straight by listening to what these witnesses have to say. And there are good and important investigative reasons not let one witness know what another witness has said,’ Schiff said.
‘These Republicans who are complaining – and I have to chuckle – they leave the interviews in the middle of the interview to go out and talk to the press and speak about the interview as they are complaining about leaks,’ he said.
‘I give them credit for the most incredible hootspa,’ he added.
Schiff also got in a dig at Attorney General William Barr, who is investigating how a counter-intelligence investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign started.
Schiff pointed out Barr is going around the world to talk to government officials behind closed doors about the matter.
‘I wish some of them would call for transparency for what the attorney general is doing around the world,’ he said.
Kent, who majored in Russian language and literature at Harvard, has held several jobs requiring him to grapple with corruption in Ukraine, which ranks 120th of 180 nations in a Transparency International corruption perceptions index.
Before taking up his current job, Kent served as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine from 2015 to 2018 and as the senior anti-corruption coordinator in the State Department’s European Bureau from 2014 to 2015. He has been in the foreign service since 1992.
He was subpoenaed by Democrats after the State Department and the White House told him not to testify.
According to State Department emails shared with congressional staff last month, Kent told colleagues that former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch had become the target of a ‘classic disinformation operation.’
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said interview transcripts will eventually be released
Yovanovitch testified last week to lawmaker that Trump personally pressured the State Department to have her removed from her position.
She said that after she was abruptly recalled from her post, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told her that the president had lost confidence in her.
‘He added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the department had been under pressure from the president to remove me since the summer of 2018,’ Yovanovitch said.
‘He also said that I had done nothing wrong and that this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause,’ she added.
Kent, along with Acting Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Phil Reeker, worked to provide State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl and Undersecretary for Political Affairs David Hale with facts to counter the conspiratorial narratives being pushed about the Yovanovitch.
‘One key sign of it being fake is that most of the names are misspelled in English – we would never spell most that way,’ Kent said in the email to colleagues.
Kent suggested the department push back by ‘circling in red all the misspellings and grammar mistakes and reposting it,’ as the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has done to counter propaganda.
Democrats have been moving the impeachment inquiry along at a steady pace with a parade of witnesses arriving on Capitol Hill.
Former Ambassador the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified last week as did Kurt Volker, a former envoy to Ukraine.
Although Democrats have not released transcripts of testimony some details have leaked.
Democrats did release the text messages Volker submitted as evidence in his testimony, which showed concerns from career officials about whether the president was with holding U.S. aid money from the Ukraine in order to get them to launch an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.
Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, who was a part of the text conversations about Ukraine, will testify on Thursday.
Sonland was scheduled to testify last week but Trump blocked him from doing so. He was appearing voluntarily but, after the president told him not to show up, Democrats issued a subpoena.
Brechbuhl will also testify Thursday.
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified behind closed doors last week
Trump’s Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, testifies behind closed doors on Thursday
Michael McKinley, the former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who resigned last week, will testify Wednesday.
Trump’s complaint about the Democrats handling of the investigation come after one of his top allies on Capitol Hill complained about not being allowed in the SCIF – the room in the basement of the Capitol for classified and sensitive information – to hear the testimony.
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz complained he was kicked out of Monday’s deposition of Fiona Hill by House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff.
Gaetz, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, is not on any of the three panels conducting the impeachment investigation – Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight.