The second week of public hearings in the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry began Tuesday morning with testimony from Jennifer Williams, a State Department aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, followed by testimony from former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, and former White House Russia adviser Tim Morrison.
But the big show continued Wednesday starting at 6:00 a.m. PT/9:00 a.m. ET, when Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who said he personally told Zelensky’s top aide that U.S. aid to Ukraine was linked to the Biden investigations, testified. Meanwhile, the Wednesday afternoon session will include testimony from Laura Cooper and David Hale.
In addition to broadcasts from the major television networks, C-SPAN will once again air the full uninterrupted hearings. Watch Sondland’s testimony above, and below, see Monday’s testimonies from Williams, Vindman, Volker and Morrison:
Fiona Hill, a top Russian specialist on the National Security Council, and David Holmes, the aide who heard the conversation between Sondland and Trump, will testify on Thursday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House of Representatives would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
The decision came in light of a whistleblower complaint that the president sought to use foreign power from Ukraine for his own political gain. During a phone call with Ukraine’s president, Trump reportedly pressured Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the son of former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden; earlier that week, Trump admitted that he had brought up Biden’s family during the call but told reporters that he did so because “we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.” The president also confirmed that his administration withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine but denied that it was done for leverage.
Week one of the impeachment saw testimony three career public servants: William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs; and Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.