November 6, 2019

Read Bill Taylor’s Testimony to House Impeachment Investigators

Drip, drip.

Tom Williams/ZUMA

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House impeachment investigators on Wednesday released the transcript of their interview with Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat to Ukraine.

If you need a refresher, Taylor told lawmakers in his closed-door session last month that Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, had informed him that both military assistance to Ukraine and a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be withheld until Ukraine announced it was launching an investigation into a company connected to Joe Biden’s son. Text message exchanges provided to lawmakers also revealed that Taylor had described it as “crazy” to withhold the aid.

The release on Wednesday came shortly after House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced that public hearings would start next week. Taylor, Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, a top State Department official, are scheduled to kick things off.

We’ll be digging through the most revealing parts of Taylor’s testimony. Until then, you can read the full transcript below:

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

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Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

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