On Thursday, former special ambassador to Ukraine Kurt Volker appeared in a closed-door hearing for members of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees. Volker was deposed behind closed doors as the first official action of the impeachment inquiry. Throughout the afternoon, Republicans have been hustling out of the hearing to demonstrate their concern for “leaks” by loudly declaring that Volker’s testimony was somehow good for Donald Trump. However, that appears to be, unsurprisingly, a lie.
The Washington Post reports Volker told Congress that the whole story Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been selling about Joe Biden was a lie—and they knew that going in. Volker told investigators that he warned Giuliani that the claims about Biden were “untrustworthy” and that he attempted to “caution” Trump’s personal attorney about the story they were pushing, as well as the sources they were using. Despite being told that the information was wrong, Giuliani didn’t just continue to use it in his meetings with officials: He brought that information to U.S. media, sent it to the State Department, and continued to press the story with Trump. And, despite his claims that he knew Giuliani was lying, that didn’t stop Volker from helping him or preventing the exchange of a series of friendly texts.
However, there appears to be no information so far on the biggest incident involving Volker. The day after the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Volker and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland met with Zelensky to advise him on how to “navigate” Trump’s request that he do “a favor,” including manufacturing dirt about Biden and searching for Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Long before Volker walked into that office with Zelensky, he knew that the claims about Biden were lies and that the search for a “missing server” was nonsense. He had already said as much to Giuliani. But what did Volker say to Zelensky? How did he and Sondland explain Trump’s attempt to extort information he could use in the upcoming election? That is still unclear.
Volker resigned the day after the whistleblower complaint became public, complete with information showing that Volker had helped set up meetings between Giuliani and a Ukrainian official. Volker has made no public statement to explain his resignation, and there had been no statement from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or the State Department.