--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before we start, learn about art, learn about math, learn with your heart, learn about tech, learn design, learn engineering, grapes into wine. So many options to learn as you grow. Try it for free at kiwico.com slash explained.
--:-- Noel King: Late on Tuesday, you slacked me a 15-page PDF along with lots of proclamations. What were you so excited about? This was the testimony I had been waiting for. And I think a lot of the country had been waiting for to see, wait a minute, was there actually a quid pro quo with Ukraine? And based on this testimony, we might have found it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you're referring to the testimony of Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor. Billy T, as no one calls him. Tay-Tay. Tay-Tay, as many people call another person.
--:-- Noel King: Are you ready for it? How did Tay-Tay enter the fray-fray?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tay-Tay entered the fray-fray by being subpoenaed to appear in front of House committees that are conducting the impeachment inquiry.
--:-- Noel King: What he found is that basically everything we've already heard so far from previous people testifying was not the full story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does William Taylor get the top job representing the United States in Ukraine?
--:-- Noel King: So you may remember that the Trump administration unceremoniously pushed out the then ambassador to Ukraine, Masha Yovanovitch, over these allegations that aren't corroborated at all that she was working against Trump and did not like him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And basically because of that, Giuliani and others got Trump to bring her home early.
--:-- Noel King: So Secretary of State Mike Pompeo needs to find someone and he finds Taylor in late May.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taylor was working at a think tank in Washington called the U.S. Institute of Peace. And he had been an ambassador to Ukraine before.
--:-- Noel King: And Taylor was pretty clear with Pompeo, like, if I'm taking this job, I am going to be supporting a pretty strong foreign policy towards Ukraine, meaning giving them lethal aid to fend off Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Pompeo goes, A-OK.
--:-- Noel King: Taylor goes, knowing full well and having consulted with Yovanovitch about everything that was kind of going on behind the scenes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So once he's on the scene, according to this testimony that was released on Tuesday, what happens?
--:-- Noel King: So Taylor finds that there are two foreign policies happening towards Ukraine. One that he deems the regular one, which is, you know, how any regular foreign policy towards another country works.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Through the State Department, through official channels, through the ambassador. That's normal. That's all well and good.
--:-- Noel King: Then he finds that there's this irregular policy, which is spearheaded in particular by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, and Kurt Volker, who used to be the special envoy towards Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And with a little bit of Energy Secretary Rick Perry thrown on the side.
--:-- Noel King: It's these three men that seem to be leading a, as some would call it, a shadow foreign policy towards Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taylor calls it an irregular foreign policy where basically they're trying to get something out of Kiev that official channels would not try to get out of Kiev.
--:-- Noel King: What you really need to know about what he found is that the official and unofficial foreign policies really diverged in a dramatic and arguably corrupt way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does Taylor lay this all out?
--:-- Noel King: I think we should start with July 10th. So July 10th, there's this White House meeting between Gordon Sondland, that U.S. ambassador to the EU, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Fiona Hill, who used to run European affairs at the White House, and then a bunch of Ukrainian officials.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Taylor's not in this meeting?
--:-- Noel King: Taylor's not in this meeting. You may have already heard from press reports and previous testimony that Bolton left that meeting pretty angry and told Hill you should talk to an NSC lawyer about what happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is the drug deal meeting.
--:-- Noel King: Bolton advised her to tell White House lawyers, I'm not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly, the drug deal meeting.
--:-- Noel King: What we heard from Hill's testimony, and she said this previously, was that everyone left that meeting understanding that Sondland conveyed this message, that if Ukraine wanted what it wanted, that meeting with Trump, it would have to commit to investigations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. So Taylor's not in this meeting. Why is this a part of his testimony?
--:-- Noel King: Because he heard about it afterward and had heard it from people who were in the know about what happened in that meeting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happens next?
--:-- Noel King: So I think we should go to July 18th where there's this video conference call between government officials in which Taylor is participating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then he hears during this call that basically some people around the table had been instructed not to give that military aid to Ukraine.
--:-- Noel King: And Taylor is like, wait a minute, what? What's going on?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what he says, quote unquote, all that the OMB staff person – so that's someone who works at the Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- Noel King: All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to OMB.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So to be very clear Taylor lays out that he learned in this official meeting that the president had given order to his chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to then give to the Office of Management and Budget to not give the aid to Ukraine.
--:-- Noel King: So what Taylor laying out here is that the president directly held up this military aid to Ukraine for some reason.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. So now we have a clear implication of the president in this entire Ukraine aid holdup.
--:-- Noel King: We don't know what reason yet, but we do know that this goes to the very top. That's what we know based on Taylor's testimony.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then if you go to July 20th, you have two important conversations that Taylor's a part of.
--:-- Noel King: The first is he's talking to Sondland, in which Sondland says that he told Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to use the phrase, I will leave no stone unturned regarding the investigations when he inevitably meets Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In other words, you have Sondland coaching Zelensky to be like, yes, Mr. President, we will do the investigations and we will be very thorough.
--:-- Noel King: Sondland actually told President Zelensky what to say?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is what Taylor implies.
--:-- Noel King: Here's what he says. Sondland told me that he had recommended to President Zelensky that he use the phrase, I will leave no stone unturned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Also on July 20th, Taylor has a conversation with a top Ukrainian official in which he says that this official conveyed to me that President Zelensky did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election campaign.
--:-- Noel King: It's now pretty clear that Ukraine was feeling odd pressure here and feeling concerned that Trump was trying to get them to potentially help Trump with 2020, especially with the Burisma investigation, which would impact the Bidens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: July 26th, Taylor and Volker, the former special envoy for Ukraine, they met with Zelensky and it all went well.
--:-- Noel King: And then they go to the Donbass region, which is the eastern part of Ukraine where the Russians have effectively invaded.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And let me read from Taylor's testimony about what happened that day because it's striking.
--:-- Noel King: Arriving for the briefing in the military headquarters, the commander thanked us for security assistance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I was aware that this assistance was on hold, which made me uncomfortable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you have him say, Ambassador Volker and I could see the armed and hostile Russian-led forces on the other side of the damaged bridge across the line of contact.
--:-- Noel King: Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance.
--:-- Noel King: So here Taylor is saying effectively two things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One, I know the aid is held up. They don't.
--:-- Noel King: And I have to kind of put on a brave face.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And two, I know the consequences of holding up this aid because people will die if Ukraine does not have what it needs to push back against Russians.
--:-- Noel King: But Taylor knows, as do we, that this aid is held up, although he's still unclear exactly why.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is that where the testimony ends?
--:-- Noel King: Oh, no, there's more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's fast forward to September 1st.
--:-- Noel King: OK, at this point, has the military aid been secured by Ukraine yet?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, that comes out on September 11th.
--:-- Noel King: So we have 10 more days till that happens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: OK. So it's here that Taylor has a conversation with Tim Morrison, who's leading the European affairs section inside the National Security Council.
--:-- Noel King: And per Taylor's testimony, Morrison tells Taylor that Sondland had told a Ukrainian official that, and I will read directly, The security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so now we have Sondland being extremely explicit about what he told a Ukrainian.
--:-- Noel King: And this is something that Sondland is completely denied doing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right, Sondland says there's no quid pro quo, right?
--:-- Noel King: In his own testimony, he said that he talked to Trump. There was no quid pro quo. That's not what we were doing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in fact, even Sondland says that as late as August, he didn't even know that Burisma had anything to do with the Bidens, which is beyond belief.
--:-- Noel King: But so this is very clear now that you see that Sondland may not have been as truthful as he should have been.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And actually, one of the meta narratives of this Taylor testimony that we've already heard is that Sondland did not really tell the truth to Congress, if you believe Taylor.
--:-- Noel King: And also Volker, who has also talked to the impeachment inquiry, he may not have given the full story of his involvement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to wrap this whole thing up, on September 8th, Sondland and Taylor have a phone call.
--:-- Noel King: And I should read from Taylor's testimony here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman.
--:-- Noel King: When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asked that person to pay up before signing the check.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's here that you have Sondland being explicit that Trump feels or believes he is owed something from Ukraine before they get the money.
--:-- Noel King: How did Taylor respond to that?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, according to Taylor, he says, I argued that the explanation made no sense.
--:-- Noel King: The Ukrainians did not owe President Trump anything and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was crazy, as I had said in my text message to Ambassador Sondland and Volker on September 9th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you clearly have Taylor hearing all of this and saying this looks like a clear quid pro quo that you have Trump asking for a public commitment by Ukraine to investigate Burisma so the Bidens and the DNC server conspiracy theory in order to get the money.
--:-- Noel King: Taylor thought it was crazy but Sondland and Volcker who are part of that irregular and separate foreign policy process were pushing this to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Noel King: And so Taylor just called them all out in his opening statement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I recommend everyone read the full thing because there's a lot more in it.
--:-- Noel King: No one's going to read it, Alex. All right, fine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But even so, that's the main thrust that you need to know that Taylor says basically to lawmakers and people investigating this impeachment inquiry, Everything you've heard so far is not the full story.
--:-- Noel King: This is the full story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the full story is there was a quid pro quo and President Trump was involved.
--:-- [Break music plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hello? Hey, Desmond, it's Sean from Today Explained. How are you?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Desmond, it's no secret to listeners of the show that you are the leading Today Explained KiwiCo expert.
--:-- Desmond: Yeah, I guess so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's also no secret to close listeners of this show that KiwiCo does Halloween costumes, and I'm very excited about it.
--:-- Desmond: Yeah, I'm excited too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I got to ask, are you going to go to KiwiCo.com slash Explained where people can get a free trial to find your Halloween costume?
--:-- Desmond: Well, I actually wanted to dress up as the Today Explained logo.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're going to be the Today Explained logo for Halloween?
--:-- Desmond: Yeah, we already got material.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Desmond, you're my hero.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wait, are the kids going to know it? Is today explained big in, you know, elementary school where you go?
--:-- Desmond: Well, I don't think we actually have like Halloween parties at this school.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah?
--:-- Desmond: There are lots of different cultures going, but I'm going to go trick-or-treating still.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's very considerate of you.
--:-- Desmond: I just demand to see photos of the greatest Halloween costume of all time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alex, remember that one time the president of the United States and the president of Ukraine had that joint press conference at the United Nations in New York?
--:-- Alex Ward: Totally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Zelensky, have you felt any pressure from President Trump to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden?
--:-- Alex Ward: No, you heard that we had, I think, good phone call. It was normal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you remember what Zelensky said when Trump publicly asked him if he had been pressured?
--:-- Alex Ward: It was all good. Nothing bad happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does that moment and that statement from President Zelensky compare to what we see in Bill Taylor's account?
--:-- Alex Ward: It doesn't go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, from what we see in the opening statement, you see Ukrainians feeling pressured, thinking that they might be a pawn in a U.S. election and being confused about what U.S. policy was towards Ukraine, whether they were going to get the aid or not.
--:-- Alex Ward: Clearly, if you were sitting in Kiev, you were just dumbfounded and worried about what was happening back in Washington.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So why would Zelensky say that in front of the president?
--:-- Alex Ward: Because he has to. Right. I mean, it's diplomacy. You can't be like, yeah, I felt pressured. This was a shitty thing for Trump to do. You can't be saying that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And look, it's possible that a lot did not get to Zelensky.
--:-- Alex Ward: But what's clear from what we see in the opening statement is that there were Ukrainian officials worried about, hey, do we have to actually like do what America wants us to do here in order to get what was promised?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What were their concerns specifically that they'd have to investigate Burisma and Hunter Biden, that they'd have to participate in perhaps interfering with the foreign election?
--:-- Alex Ward: Explicitly, it was along the lines of, again, we don't want to be a pawn. I mean, I think that's the most explicit bit of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ukraine does not want to be used by Trump or the Trump campaign or whoever to influence 2020 in any way.
--:-- Alex Ward: You also have them being a little skeptical about making this public announcement that the administration wanted, which is like you guys have to announce openly that this investigation to Prism is going to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It looks like there was even – it was a close call that they almost went on CNN to talk about it.
--:-- Alex Ward: Yeah. Zelensky and CNN had agreed – if you listen to Taylor's account, they effectively agreed on some sort of interview.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in that interview, Zelensky was going to say that they were going to open this investigation.
--:-- Alex Ward: That never happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taylor thought it was a bad idea, went to the Ukrainians and confirmed twice like you guys aren't doing this, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: And they were like, no, we're not going to be on TV and say it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, of course, it's all Taylor's testimony. So he might make himself more of a hero here being like, hey, I was checking in to make sure they weren't doing it was a bad idea.
--:-- Alex Ward: It does seem like it was a Ukrainian decision to pull the interview.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But still, we were that close, right? We were that close to having Ukraine effectively acquiesce to this strong arming from the Trump administration.
--:-- Alex Ward: Do we know what stopped him from going on CNN to do this interview?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't know.
--:-- Alex Ward: But Zelensky is a comedian turned president. And he came to prominence promising to end corruption in Ukraine and like completely change the style of politics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there's a good chance that the people around him, or even himself, were kind of like, if I do this, I'm kind of playing into the US hand. I'm kind of playing into the corruption thing.
--:-- Alex Ward: Plus this Burisma thing has been done. I don't need to do it. We just don't need this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But even so, it looked like for a moment, Trump was gonna get what he wanted with Zelensky announcing an open investigation on CNN
--:-- Alex Ward: And here how important the CNN thing was to the administration or at least the idea of it
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: From Taylor's testimony, Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelensky and Mr. Yermak, who's a top Ukrainian official, and told them that although this was not a quid Pro quo, if President Zelensky did not clear things up in public, we would be at a stalemate.
--:-- Alex Ward: And I, this is Taylor, I understood a stalemate to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelensky agreeing to make a public statement in an interview with CNN.
--:-- Alex Ward: So, like, this was part of it, right? That you have Sondland saying, you want the aid? You gotta say it openly. You gotta say it. Otherwise, we're going to be right where we're at.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so then you had Zelensky being like, all right, fine, I'll say it on CNN. But he didn't say it on CNN.
--:-- Alex Ward: The Trump administration seems pretty clearly implicated here in trying to get something out of this deal that will benefit them in the 2020 election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ukraine seems pretty clearly invested in getting military aid and a meeting with the president.
--:-- Alex Ward: Where does Bill Taylor fall into this? What are his motivations?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taylor has been very, very clear that the U.S. should provide lethal assistance to Ukraine in order to help them fight off the Russians.
--:-- Alex Ward: Like, let's not forget the stakes here. This is the first fight that we see. This is the first battle that we see. And it's the first priority for the United States while I am here in Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The stakes here is that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.
--:-- Alex Ward: And there are still Russians in Ukraine today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there is a war happening there. Thousands have died and more will.
--:-- Alex Ward: And Taylor kind of took the job saying, like, I'm going to support lethal aid to Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the fact that it was being held up and he didn't know why clearly would have irked him.
--:-- Alex Ward: The other reason Taylor seems to get caught up in this and cares about it so deeply is because he worries that like, look, if Ukraine can't fend off Russia, if Russia ends up kind of taking over Ukraine, then this whole idea of Ukraine becoming a European country of like a continent whole free and at peace, it's over.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so this is massive geopolitical stakes.
--:-- Alex Ward: And Taylor is trying to both walk this line of like following U.S. foreign policy as it usually is and pushing off the Russians while also trying to manage this nonsense of like, oh, you will only get the money if you do what Trump wants and looking into the Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So like he's clearly conflicted in what's going on.
--:-- Alex Ward: But Taylor has a plan. Get them the money. Help save Ukrainian lives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he pulled that off in the end. Whether he did it or not, like personally, we don't know.
--:-- Alex Ward: But yes, the hold on the aid was lifted on September 11th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taylor is now still overseeing a policy in which the U.S. is giving lethal support to Ukraine in order to defend off Russia.
--:-- Alex Ward: If Taylor delivered some sort of smoking gun yesterday, where does that leave him in this position, in this diplomatic position with Ukraine as part of the Trump administration's State Department?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's hard to see how effective he'll be because he just called out Trump, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: He implicated Trump in this entire thing, effectively laid out a quid pro quo.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump was involved that everyone in Trump's orbit, the Giuliani's, the Sondland's, the Volkers, have either lied or not told the full truth about what they were doing.
--:-- Alex Ward: And then you had the White House and Trump effectively called Taylor out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The White House tonight says this about the testimony by the top diplomat in Ukraine.
--:-- Alex Ward: Well, President Trump has done nothing wrong. This is a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical, unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was no quid pro quo.
--:-- Alex Ward: So how do you continue to represent the United States?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Remember, ambassadors, yes, they're part of the State Department, but they really are like the figurehead for America in that country.
--:-- Alex Ward: And they report to the president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Taylor here is saying there was something corrupt and bad happening here.
--:-- Alex Ward: And I'm going to call you out because I have the gravitas to do it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've seen it happen.
--:-- Alex Ward: And he's not part of Trump world here, right? Like Volcker was a part-time special envoy that Trump gave the job to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sondland is a Trump donor who got this cushy job representing America in the European Union.
--:-- Alex Ward: Yes, Taylor was picked by Pompeo to take over, but Taylor is a career official.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He is not a Trump guy.
--:-- Alex Ward: And so he saw something bad. He called it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it is a reminder that there are Bill Taylors out there, that there are people whose only job is to represent America and to do what they feel is the right thing for the government and for the country, and that they will rise up and stand up when they feel like they need to.
--:-- Alex Ward: And this is very clearly Taylor's stand-up moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you ready for it?
--:-- [Theme music starts playing]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before we go, KiwiCo. Projects for kids, I know you know. Learn about math. Learn about snow. Learn about art and how trees grow. Learn with your sis. Learn with your bro. Try it for free at KiwiCo.com slash explained.
