Who's scheduled to publicly testify next in Trump's impeachment hearings
- The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump has officially moved into its public phase, and witnesses in the inquiry are beginning to testify in an open session before Congress.
- On Wednesday, the public phase of the inquiry kicked off with the testimony of acting US ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and State Department official George Kent.
- Nine more diplomats and national security officials - many of whom have already appeared to testify behind closed-doors - will testify publicly in the next week.
- Here's the full schedule of which witnesses are publicly testifying in the coming days.
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The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump has officially moved into its public phase, and witnesses are beginning to testify in open session before the House Intelligence Committee, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and House Oversight Committee, who are jointly pursuing the inquiry.
On Wednesday, the public phase of the inquiry kicked off with the testimony of acting US ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and State Department official George Kent.
The two diplomats corroborated previous witness testimony that Trump and members of his administration used a $400 million military aid package to Ukraine as leverage to pressure its government to announce investigations that would be politically favorable to Trump.
Now, the House committees have announced that nine more diplomats and national security officials - many of whom have already appeared to testify behind closed-doors - will testify publicly in the next few days.
Here's the schedule of who is testifying in the next week.
This schedule will be periodically updated as the Committees announce public testimony for more witnesses.
- Friday, November 15: Former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who says Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pushed her out of her position earlier this year, will testify.
- Tuesday, November 19:
- State Department official and advisor to Vice President Mike Pence Jennifer Williams and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an expert on Eastern European affairs on the National Security Council will testify in the morning.
- Former US special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former NSC staffer Tim Morrison will testify publicly in the afternoon.
- Wednesday, November 20:
- US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland will testify in the morning.
- Pentagon official Laura Cooper- whose closed-door testimony on October 23 was stormed by a group of 30 GOP lawmakers - and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale will appear in the afternoon.
- Thursday, November 21:
- Former NSC senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs Fiona Hill will testify publicly before the committees.
The impeachment inquiry all started with an anonymous whistleblower's complaint, turned over to Congress in early September, that Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 US election in a series of events culminating in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The complaint specifically charged that Trump's pressure on the Ukrainian government to investigate alleged corruption from former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter came days after he withheld a nearly $400 million military-aid package to Ukraine that Congress had already appropriated.
The White House's notes of the call confirm Trump brought up how the US does "a lot for Ukraine." Immediately after, Trump asked Zelensky to do him a "favor, though" by investigating Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and was somehow in possession of a Democratic National Committee server.
In the past month, multiple diplomats and national security officials have testified that Trump and Giuliani explicitly conditioned both releasing the aid and inviting Zelensky to a meeting at the White House on Ukraine putting out at a statement announcing investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election.
Read more:
Marie Yovanovitch will testify Friday in the Trump impeachment hearings. Here's what to expect