Obligatory link to the Taylor testimony and key excerpts here, and notable highlights from key excerpts below:
Rudy Giuliani, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and Ambassador Kurt Volker operated “an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policymaking with respect to Ukraine.” (Page 23-24)
During a meeting on May 23, 2019, President Trump made clear to those in the “irregular channel” that, in order for President Zelensky to get an Oval Office meeting, “they needed to work with Rudy Giuliani.” (Page 24, 59, 113)
As Ambassador Sondland was preparing for a call between President Trump and President Zelensky on June 28, 2019, he “cut out” the regular interagency participants and “requested that the call not be transcribed.” (Page 126-128, 128)
In July, Ambassador Volker advised President Zelensky and his Chief of Staff “how President Zelensky could prepare for the phone call with President Trump” and “suggested to President Zelensky that President Trump would like to hear about the investigations.” (Page 64-66)
National Security Advisor John Bolton abruptly ended a meeting with Ukrainian officials on July 10, 2019, after Ambassador Sondland raised “investigations,” which “triggered Ambassador Bolton’s antenna, political antenna, and he said, we don’t do politics here.” (Page 163-164)
Ambassadors Volker and Sondland told Ambassador Taylor that President Trump “wanted to hear from Zelensky” before a meeting would be scheduled in the Oval Office. (Page 125-126)
Ambassador Sondland explicitly “connected ‘investigations’ with an Oval Office meeting for President Zelensky” during the meeting with Ukrainian officials on July 10, 2019. (Page 133-134)
Ukrainian official “believed that opening those investigations, in particular on Burisma, would have involved Ukraine in the 2020 election campaign.” (Page 135-136)
On July 18, 2019, Ambassador Taylor and others “sat in astonishment” as an OMB official revealed during an inter-agency call that President Trump ordered a hold on military assistance to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression. (Page 27-28, 131)
Both the military assistance to Ukraine and the White House meeting with the President “got blocked by this second channel.” (Page 150)
It was the “unanimous opinion of every level of interagency discussion” that the security assistance should be resumed “without delay.” (Page 132)
President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that “he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.” (Page 35-36, 141-142, 36-37)
According to National Security Council Senior Director Tim Morrison’s readout to Ambassador Taylor, President Trump insisted on a September 7th call with Ambassador Sondland that the President of Ukraine “go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.” (Page 38)
The next day, Ambassador Sondland told Ambassador Taylor directly that “President Trump was adamant that President Zelensky himself had to clear things up and do it in public,” and “if President Zelensky did not clear things up in public, we would be at a stalemate.” (Page 39)
Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker understood that “if President Trump was going to sign the check for military assistance,” the Ukrainians “needed to pay up first and that pay-up was a public declaration of these two political investigations.” (Page 146-147)
It would be a “nightmare” if the Trump Administration withheld military aid after the Ukrainians announced the investigations because the “Russians are paying attention to how much support the Americans are going to provide the Ukrainians,” and that “humiliation” would “give the Russians a freer hand, and I would quit.” (Page 209-210)
On September 28, 2019, John Bolton suggested that Ambassador Taylor write a “firstperson cable” directly to Secretary Pompeo about President Trump’s hold on aid to Ukraine “to get attention back there.” (Page 229-230)
The State Department refused to produce to the Committees documents that Ambassador Taylor provided to the Department. (Page 45-46)
This is pretty fucking serious shit, corroborated by paper trails, and I would argue shows an understanding that what they are doing is wrong by the fact they went out of their way to hide their actions, and pompeo/state dept failed to provide documents that Taylor did provide. This is worse than quid pro quo. This is a textbook example of extortion.