October 14, 2019

Impeachment Liveblog: Former Trump Aide on Russia and Ukraine Testifies

Here’s the latest.

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President Donald Trump’s former top adviser on all things Ukraine and Russia is testifying before House investigators today. Fiona Hill, who resigned from her post just days before the now-infamous July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, will reportedly tell lawmakers that Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland pursued a Ukrainian policy inconsistent with normal National Security Council procedures. 

Follow along below.

8:37 p.m. ET: The Washington Post has a good profile of Gordon Sondland, the venal, grasping Portland hotelier–turned–US ambassador to the European Union. Once upon a time Sondlannd pretended to be disgusted by Trump’s treatment of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, only to change his tune after the election.

“He spent a year trying to prove that he wasn’t anti-Trump,” said a former White House official who watched Sondland’s role evolve. “He got into the position [of ambassador], and he had an opportunity to prove it. Trump knew that he wanted to prove his loyalty.”

And what for? 

Current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats say Sondland seemed to believe that if he delivered for Trump in Ukraine he could ascend in the ranks of government. A person close to Sondland disputed that notion, but other officials said Sondland had been talked about in the administration as a possible successor to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

8:26 p.m. ET: Hill is still reportedly testifying. 

7:53 p.m. ET: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s former senior adviser, Michael McKinley, will testify on Wednesday in a closed session in the impeachment inquiry, CNN and Washington Post reported on Monday. McKinley resigned from his post last week. 

7:02 p.m. ET: Federal prosecutors in New York are looking into Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine and bank records as part of an investigation into “Mr. Giuliani’s role in an alleged conspiracy involving two of his business associates,” sources told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. Those associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were indicted on campaign-finance charges last week.  

2:00 p.m. ET: On Sunday, Hunter Biden announced that he’ll resign at the end of the month from the board of a Chinese private equity company. Biden also said that he would not serve on any foreign boards if his father becomes president. Trump, unsurprisingly, is twisting the announcement:

11:00 a.m. ET: Rep. Matt Gaetz, making things weird:

9:50 a.m. ET: If you missed over the weekend, House Intelligence chairman Rep. Adam Schiff signaled on Sunday that the whistleblower whose complaint triggered impeachment proceedings may not testify anymore, citing the individual’s safety. Trump has repeatedly attacked the whistleblower and demanded the opportunity to meet his “accuser” face to face.

9:30 a.m. ET: Hill has arrived.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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