Looks like The Mickster is involved up to his eyeballs

[blueinohio]

Politics
White House directed ‘three amigos’ to run Ukraine policy, senior State department official tells House investigators


George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, was summoned to testify Oct. 15 in the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. (Reuters)
By Paul Kane, Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Bade
October 15 at 4:40 PM PT
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting this spring in which officials determined to take Ukraine policy out of the traditional channels, putting Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and special U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker in charge instead, a top State Department official told lawmakers Tuesday.
George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, told House investigators that he was instructed to “lay low,” focus on the five other countries in his portfolio, and defer to Volker, Sondland and Perry — who called themselves the “three amigos” — on matter related to Ukraine, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) told reporters Tuesday.
The meeting, which Kent told lawmakers took place on May 23, according to Connolly, was just days after the administration recalled Marie Yovanovitch from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch spoke to House investigators last week about the campaign against her, which she and other former diplomats have said was organized by Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.
The revelations from Kent’s testimony suggest the decision to wrest Ukraine policy away from career diplomats and put it in the hands of officials seen as more sympathetic to the president was taken several weeks before Trump spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In their July 25 call, Trump appeared to pressure the Ukrainian leader into launching probes of the 2016 U.S. election and the son of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden.


Administration officials informed the Ukrainians of their decision to shift authority for Ukraine policy during a meeting with Zelensky in Kiev on June 2, Connolly recalled Kent as saying.
“For some Americans from the embassy, that was news to them,” he added.
Kent spoke for several hours Tuesday in a closed-door meeting with the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees, which together are conducting an impeachment probe into whether Trump abused his office to pressure a foreign government into doing work that could affect the election.
The longtime Foreign Service official had been summoned for a deposition in the investigation, with Democrats expected to question him about a campaign by Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to pressure Ukraine into investigating the president’s political rival.
[Demoralized State Department personnel question Pompeo’s role in Ukraine crisis]
Kent arrived on Capitol Hill after the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for his testimony, according to a congressional aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. The White House, in a letter to top Democrats last week, said it would not cooperate with the impeachment investigation, forcing Democrats to rely on subpoenas to compel witnesses to appear.
Giuliani accused Yovanovitch and Kent, formerly the No. 2 ranking diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, of trying to protect the Bidens from an investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors. Yovanovitch, who was recalled from Kiev in May, adamantly pushed back on those accusations during testimony before House investigators on Friday. Kent will also likely be asked about those assertions.


Internal documents turned over to Congress by the State Department inspector general in early October preview what Kent might tell lawmakers: The messages show that Kent suspected beginning in March that Yovanovitch had become the target of a “classic disinformation operation” — and that he raised concerns to his superiors in hopes they would defend their own. 
[Ousted ambassador Marie Yovanovitch tells Congress Trump pressured State Dept. to remove her]
Giuliani and a columnist for the news outlet the Hill had alleged earlier this year that Yovanovitch provided a “do not prosecute list” to Ukrainian officials to protect the Bidens and other allies. But Kent, according to the documents, told his colleagues that the list was phony, pointing to incorrect name spellings that longtime officials like Yovanovitch and himself would never have gotten wrong, he said.
“One key sign of it being fake is that most of the names are misspelled in English — we would never spell most that way,” said Kent, who is fluent in Russian and Ukrainian, in one email to colleagues.
Giuliani has maintained that his activities related to Ukraine were above board and that he’s done nothing wrong.
Kent, according to the documents, suggested that the department could counter the attack by “circling in red all the misspellings and grammar mistakes and reposting it,” as the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had done in similar counter-propaganda campaigns. 
“If we wanted to push back hard(er), we could consider a similar approach,” he said.
Lawmakers are bound to ask Kent about whom he contacted with his concerns. According to the inspector general’s documents, he took them to Philip Reeker, a U.S. diplomat in Europe, and later forwarded them to the No. 3 official at the department, David Hale, and State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a close confidant of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.


Brechbuhl also has been summoned for testimony before House Democrats.
In an attempt to make sense of what he called the “fake list,” Kent suggested it could be an effort by a former Ukrainian prosecutor — Yuri Lutsenko, who was ousted for corruption — to try to pin the blame for his failures on the United States.
“This list appears to be an effort by Lutsenko to inoculate himself for why he did not pursue corrupt associates and political allies — to claim that the U.S. told him not to,” Kent said. “Complete poppycock.” 
[Former Ukraine prosecutor says Hunter Biden ‘did not violate anything]
Lawmakers will most assuredly question Kent about that theory as well, given his vast knowledge of the region. 
Kent, who joined the State Department in 1992, currently serves as deputy assistant secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau, where he oversees policy on Ukraine as well as about half a dozen additional countries. From 2015 to 2018, he served as deputy chief of mission in Kiev. Previously he was senior anti-corruption coordinator in the State Department’s European Bureau. 
Kent is one of more than a half-dozen State officials who have been summoned by Democrats as part of their probe into Trump’s bid to pressure Ukraine into digging up dirt on the Biden family — and sideline State officials who did not take well to that task. Democrats have also requested documents from the White House, Vice President Pence, the Pentagon, and the Office of Management and Budget, subpoena deadlines that will come due this week. 
John Hudson contributed to this report.

Paul Kane is The Washington Post's senior congressional correspondent and columnist. His column about Congress, @PKCapitol, appears throughout the week and on Sundays. He joined The Post in 2007.

Karoun Demirjian is a congressional reporter covering national security, including defense, foreign policy, intelligence and matters concerning the judiciary. She was previously a correspondent based in The Post's bureau in Moscow.

Rachael Bade is a Congress reporter for The Washington Post, primarily focusing on the House. Her coverage areas include House Democrats’ oversight of the Trump administration as well as policy clashes with the White House, the dynamics animating the historic freshman class and the inner workings of the Democratic leadership team.


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