Diplomats pushed Ukraine to investigate, dangled Trump visit

WASHINGTON — Top U.S. diplomats encouraged Ukraine’s newly elected president to conduct an investigation linked to Joe Biden’s family in return for a high-profile visit with President Donald Trump. Volker, in a text message on the morning of a planned July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote: “Heard from White House — Assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / “get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.” An adviser to the Ukrainian president appeared to go along with the proposal, which entailed investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company where Joe Biden’s son Hunter served on the board. Volker and the two other diplomats — William “Bill” Taylor, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union — discussed the statement Zelenskiy would issue in support of the investigation. Taylor told Sondland he was “counting on you to be right,” and Sondland snapped back, “Bill, I never said I was right.” Sondland early on had texted that he wanted to get the conversation started with Ukraine “irrespective of the pretext” because he was “worried about the alternative.” Now, he was saying, they have identified the best path forward, and “let’s hope it works.” Taylor then texted, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” After a more than four-hour pause, Sondland texted Taylor that he was incorrect, and wrote that Trump “has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind.” He also wrote, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.” In releasing the exchanges Thursday, the Democratic committee chairmen said they are “still only a subset of the full body of the materials” provided by Volker, which they hope to make public later.