The Ukraine Disaster Reveals How Trump Corrupted U.S. Diplomacy - Vanity Fair

At least one official ensnared in the negotiations over the White House visit questioned the propriety of the arrangement. “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” U.S. Charges d’Affaires in Ukraine William Taylor wrote to Sondland on September 1, after Trump canceled a visit to Poland where he had been scheduled to meet with Zelensky. A week later, Taylor raised similar concerns, “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)” And the following day, September 9, Taylor again reiterated, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” At this point, Sondland pushed back on Taylor’s suggestion. “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions,” he wrote. “The president has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”

Democrats, for their part, view the text messages as further evidence of Trump’s corruption in his attempt to use the power of the office of the American presidency to coerce a foreign country into digging up dirt on his political rivals. “These texts show a deliberate, intentional, carefully planned effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate. This is not just a president who is ad-libbing or saying something inappropriate. This is a scheme to get dirt on Joe Biden,” California congressman Ro Khanna, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, told me Friday morning. “The evidence in the Ukraine case directly implicating the president is breaking through in a way that previous scandals have not.”

Diplomats, meanwhile, view the episode as indicative of the damage Trump has inflicted upon the State Department and American diplomacy over the past three years. When Sondland dismissed Taylor’s unease, he did, after all, recommend that if the Charges d’Affaires still had concerns, he call “S”—a reference to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—to “discuss them directly.” When it’s the president of the United States and his top diplomat, who we now know was on the infamous July 25 call with Zelensky, that are engaged in questionable—if not downright illegal—behavior, what is a diplomat like Taylor expected to do?

“I think they feel like they have become an extension of the Trump empire, not just political, but also the business empire. It feels dirty and it feels degrading. That’s why there are increasing numbers of departure, even though in theory they should be waiting out another couple of years and hope for a better situation after the next election,” Brett Bruen, a former foreign service officer still in touch with his former colleagues, told me Friday. “People have a really tough time abiding by some of this stuff.... I think a lot of people are just scared that they are going to find themselves in, not just you know, a tough spot professionally but even facing some legal issues because they are so vigorously going after people.”

The Trump administration, beginning under former secretary of State Rex Tillerson and continuing into Pompeo’s tenure, has fostered a culture of fear and retribution in Foggy Bottom. Look no further than the ouster of Masha Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, who I previously reported is widely viewed by her fellow diplomats as a victim of her own competence and a wild conspiracy theory spun by Giuliani and the right-wing media. But sources I’ve spoken with argue that what happened to Yovanovitch is hardly an isolated incident.

Indeed, a State Department inspector general’s report released in August found that Kevin Moley, assistant secretary for international organization affairs, and Mari Stull, a senior adviser in the international organization bureau, targeted, harassed, and retaliated against State Department employees they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Trump. Brian Hook, a top adviser to Pompeo, has also been under investigation for similar behavior. The State Department I.G. is expected to recommend in the coming weeks he face disciplinary action. But in the meantime, Hook remains the administration’s top representative on Iran policy. (The State Department declined to comment on the matter to the Daily Beast.)

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The Ukraine Disaster Reveals How Trump Corrupted U.S. Diplomacy - Vanity Fair
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