Kurt Volker: First witness testifies in Trump impeachment probe

Kurt Volker arriving — Image caption Kurt Volker (left) resigned as US special envoy to Ukraine last week

Ex-US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker has become the first witness to testify to Congress in the impeachment probe of US President Donald Trump.

Mr Volker was among those mentioned in an anonymous whistleblower’s complaint about Mr Trump’s call to the president of Ukraine.

The Republican foreign policy expert addresses three Democrat-led committees behind closed doors on Thursday.

Mr Trump has lashed out with anger at the impeachment effort as unfounded.

Mr Volker, the former US envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), is due to testify in private to the House of Representatives Intelligence, Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs committees.

He is expected to be questioned about his role in Mr Trump’s effort to have Ukraine investigate his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who worked for a Ukrainian gas firm.

Why is he testifying?

In a phone call in July, Mr Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr on efforts to investigate the Bidens.

The whistleblower’s complaint, which triggered Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry, said that one day after that call Mr Volker and US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, met Mr Zelensky to provide advice on how to “navigate” Mr Trump’s request.

Mr Volker resigned from the Sate Department last week after being named in the whistleblower’s complaint.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has sought to block testimony from Mr Volker and four other State Department officials who Democrats wish to interview.

Democrats accuse Mr Trump of dangling about $400m (£320m) in aide over Ukraine, and that a transcript of his call makes clear that he made US military support for Ukraine conditional on their co-operation in investigating the Bidens.

In advance of his testimony, Mr Volker handed over documents to the committee, including text messages with Mr Giuliani.

Mr Giuliani – who is not a US government official – took to Twitter on Thursday morning to release screen shots of several text messages sent from Mr Volker to him.

In one tweet, Mr Giuliani wrote that Mr Volker “reached out to me to ask if I would take a call from” Andriy Yermak, an adviser to Mr Zelensky.

“Kurt did nothing wrong,” he said in another tweet.

What are the allegations against the Bidens?

When Hunter Biden joined Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma in 2014, questions were raised about a potential conflict of interest for his father.

Ukraine was undergoing a political transition after its pro-Russia president was forced out of office, and the elder Biden was making frequent trips to the country.

In 2016, Joe Biden pushed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, whose office had been investigating the oligarch owner of Burisma.

In a speech last year at a think tank, Mr Biden boasted of having threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee to successfully force Mr Shokin out.

“I looked at them and said ‘I’m leaving in six hours: if the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money’,” he said.

Mr Trump and his allies accuse Mr Biden of having acted to protect his son. However, several western governments and major financers of Ukraine’s government also wanted Mr Shokin dismissed because he was seen as a barrier to anti-corruption efforts.

Mr Shokin had also shown little appetite for pursuing Burisma.

In May this year, Ukraine’s then prosecutor general said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden.

Joe Biden has said he has never spoken to his son about his business dealings.