Kurt Volker: First witness testifies in Trump impeachment probe

WASHINGTON: Ex-US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker has become the first witness to testify to Congress in the impeachment probe of US President Donald Trump. Mr Volker was among those mentioned in an anonymous whistleblower’s complaint about Mr Trump’s call to the president of Ukraine. The Republican foreign policy expert addresses three Democrat-led committees behind closed doors on Thursday. Mr Trump has lashed out with anger at the impeachment effort as unfounded. Mr Volker, the former US envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), is due to testify in private to the House of Representatives Intelligence, Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs committees. He is expected to be questioned about his role in Mr Trump’s effort to have Ukraine investigate his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who worked for a Ukrainian gas firm. In a phone call in July, Mr Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr on efforts to investigate the Bidens. The whistleblower’s complaint, which triggered Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry, said that one day after that call Mr Volker and US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, met Mr Zelensky to provide advice on how to “navigate” Mr Trump’s request. Mr Volker resigned from the Sate Department last week after being named in the whistleblower’s complaint.