State Department Officials To Testify Giuliani Was Seen As 'Obstacle' On Ukraine

Christopher Anderson, a career foreign service officer in the State Department, will tell House impeachment investigators on Wednesday that President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani stood in the way of the White House strengthening ties with Ukraine, according to a copy of Anderson's opening statement obtained by NPR.

Anderson, who spent five years working on Washington-Kyiv relations, will describe a meeting he had with former national security adviser John Bolton on the topic of having senior White House officials engage more with Ukraine. In it, Bolton noted a possible hitch.

"He cautioned that Mr. Giuliani was a key voice with the President on Ukraine which could be an obstacle to increased White House engagement," Anderson will tell the House committees, according to his prepared remarks.

House committees are set to question Anderson and Catherine Croft, another foreign service officer and Ukraine expert, on Wednesday as part of the impeachment inquiry into whether Trump abused his office by prodding a foreign power to help his 2020 reelection bid.

Their appearance comes a day after Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council's top expert on Ukraine, told impeachment investigators that he was so troubled by Trump's demands that Ukraine investigate the Bidens, that he reported it to a superior.

In a rough transcript of a July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that was released by the White House last month, Trump appears to ask Zelenskiy to investigate a debunked conspiracy about missing Democratic National Committee emails, as well as look into Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter's business dealings in Ukraine.

In Wednesday's testimony, Anderson is expected to tell the committees that he saw a better relationship between the countries, including inviting Zelenskiy to the White House, as a way to help bring Russians back to the negotiating table with Ukraine. Yet Giuliani was persistent in his calls for Ukraine to open an investigation into the Bidens, even though Anderson and other top State Department officials cautioned against it.