Tim Morrison, who replaced Fiona Hill in July as the National Security Council expert on Eastern Europe, testified in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump on Thursday morning, and what he apparently told Congress is very confusing, if not contradictory.
Morrison appears to have verified most of what was in the conversations previously reported in testimony from Ambassador William Taylor. That includes a conversation on Sept. 1, 2019, in which Ambassador Gordon Sondland told an adviser to the Ukrainian president that “security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.” And Morrison appears to have agreed about the conversation he had with Taylor in which Morrison described his “sinking feeling” during a conversation in which Donald Trump insisted that Ukraine “go on a microphone” and open “investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.”
However, there was a point of disagreement with Taylor, with Morrison reportedly stating, “Ambassador Sondland’s proposal ... was that it could be sufficient if the new Ukrainian prosecutor general, not President Zelensky, would commit to pursue the Burisma investigation.”
But if Morrison only slightly disagreed with Taylor’s statements, his testimony contains huge differences compared to that of NSC Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman. When it comes to Trump’s July 25, 2019, phone call to Zelensky, CBS reports that, while listening to the call, Morrison says, “I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed." Republicans are already treating this as ecstatically good news. Morrison made this statement despite apparently confirming instances on the call in which Trump sought political favors from Ukraine in exchange for U.S. assistance. And despite the statement that Morrison saw nothing illegal in the call, what came after that seems extremely, extremely odd. Because multiple sources are reporting that Morrison became very concerned that the transcript of the conversation would leak. Concerned enough, says CNN, that he worried that the transcript, in which he saw nothing illegal, “could have adverse ramifications.” In fact, he grew so concerned that, The Daily Beast is reporting, it was Morrison, not attorney John Eisenberg, who actually ordered the transcript of the conversation be placed on a secure server.
And that’s not the only disagreement with Vindman. Reportedly Morrison said that the “transcript” of the call released by the White House is “complete and thorough.” That’s not a small thing. Morrison’s disagreements with Vindman and Taylor are making Republicans cheer, and suggesting that some of the most damaging testimony against Trump is subject to challenge.
On Wednesday, Vindman testified that the “rough transcript” provided by the White House was incomplete, and that the gaps in the document covered key phrases, including Trump making an extended statement about Joe Biden. The Washington Post reported that Vindman’s testimony included a direct statement connecting White House attorney John Eisenberg with the move of the original transcript to the secure server. Vindman’s account reportedly states that Eisenberg “proposed a step that other officials have said is at odds with long-standing White House protocol: moving a transcript of the call to a highly classified server and restricting access to it.”
But Morrison reportedly states that “[he] directed that the transcript of it be put on a secret White House server.” And he said that after this point, he was involved with further discussions on how it should be handled. Why he made such a suggestion if he saw nothing wrong with the call is not at all clear.