The full audio of a 40-minute call CNN released this week between Rudy Giuliani, then–US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Andriy Yermak, a top ally of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reveals that Volker’s testimony before the first Trump impeachment trial was, shall we say, carefully parsed. Volker downplayed having knowledge of the alleged quid pro quo between Trump and Ukraine.
“You will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion,” Volker wrote in his deposition.
“At no time was I aware of or knowingly took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden. As you know from the extensive real-time documentation I have provided, Vice President Biden was not a topic of our discussions,” Volker said in testimony.
The full recording, not just text messages, suggests otherwise.
The recording of the conversation contradicts Volker’s sworn testimony to Congress that he never witnessed any attempt on the part of Trump and Giuliani to muscle Ukraine into launching an investigation of Biden, Trump’s possible opponent in the upcoming presidential election.
The discrepancy between Volker’s testimony and the recording of the call has drawn the attention of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who tells Mother Jones that Volker’s assertions to Congress amounted to “a disingenuous revision of history.”
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post notes that Volker was walking a fine line:
The idea that the Trump team’s push might somehow not actually have been about the Bidens was a very fine line walked by another member of the “three amigos” whose testimony Republicans initially played up, then-European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry also tried to make a similar argument. The problem with all of that: Giuliani himself had explicitly connected the requested investigations to Biden in his public comments months before. The motivation here would seem to have been no secret, especially for someone who actually pays regular attention to U.S.-Ukraine relations.
Giuliani clerarly made the connection in calls including Volker.
“He [Volker] also referred specifically to the idea that Biden wasn’t brought up in the text messages he turned over — rather than at all in any conversations,” Blake writes. “And whether he was specifically party to ‘an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden’ is also debatable …”
It will end up being a footnote to history. But Republicans treated Volker’s testimony as exonerating. Especially now that the entire Ukraine affair pales in comparison to Trump’s big lie and inciting a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol.