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What William Taylor told Congress about Ukraine aid
Summary
A retrospective on testimony given on 22 October 2019 that fed the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.
What did the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine tell Congress, and why did it matter for Kyiv? The testimony came on 22 October 2019, the day before 23 October 2019, the date this retrospective examines.
William B. Taylor Jr., then acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, testified in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. He said he had been told that Trump would withhold military aid to Ukraine, to help his own reelection chances, until Ukraine publicly declared that investigations would be launched.
The investigations in question concerned two subjects. One was Burisma Holdings, a company that had hired Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden. The other was Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The wider scandal
The testimony belonged to what became known as the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. As the background to the affair describes it, Trump blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package in an attempt to obtain cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Contacts between the White House and the Ukrainian government led to a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.
For Ukraine, the account was notable because it linked security assistance, which the country relied on, to the domestic political interests of a U.S. president.
