Trump's Ukraine Gambit

From Hunter Biden to Kurt Volker to Trump himself, these are the people involved in the Ukraine gambit and the upcoming impeachment inquiry

(Bloomberg) -- Some of them are household names in U.S. politics: Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, Rick Perry.

Others were previously obscure bureaucrats: Kurt Volker, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, Gordon Sondland, Joseph Maguire, Michael Atkinson.

And another isn’t known at all except for the person’s work: A detailed nine-page whistle-blower complaint that has launched an impeachment inquiry into the president.

All of them have had central roles in a quickly unfolding drama over Trump’s overtures to Ukraine to get damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden:

Here’s a playbill:

Rudolph Giuliani

Trump added the former mayor of New York to his personal legal team last year, filling the role of the now-imprisoned Michael Cohen as a fixer. He’s become Trump’s most visible defender and attack dog.

For months, Giuliani has been pursuing a conspiracy theory that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in 2016 in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden. The younger Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, whose founder was under investigation for tax evasion. That investigation had been dormant for more than a year, Ukrainian officials say, when the U.S. and its European allies pressured Ukraine to fire the prosecutor for being too lax on corruption cases.

William Barr

The two-time attorney general—serving under both Trump and George H.W. Bush—has ordered an investigation into the genesis of the Russian collusion investigation headed by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

It’s unclear how involved Barr is in the Ukraine investigation, but in his phone call with Zelenskiy, Trump twice brings up Giuliani and Barr in the same breath: “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it,” he told the Ukrainian president. “I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.” The whistle-blower also wrote that Barr “appears to be involved.''

Rick Perry

The former governor of Texas is now Trump’s low-profile energy secretary. And energy is a key part of the Trump administration’s strategy in countering Russian influence in Ukraine.

Perry led the U.S. delegation to Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May—a diplomatic downgrade from Vice President Mike Pence, who had been scheduled to attend. Although the whistle-blower did not claim direct knowledge of the discussions, the complaint suggests that the purpose of sending Perry was to feel out whether Zelenskiy planned to “play ball” with the Biden investigation.

Kurt Volker

Volker is a career U.S. diplomat who started in the Reagan administration and rose to become U.S. ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush. Trump has tapped him as special envoy to Ukraine, a volunteer position.

According to the whistle-blower, Volker visited the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv the day after Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, providing advice about how to “navigate” Trump’s request for an investigation. Volker was working in concert with Giuliani, who has tweeted out text messages from Volker in order to argue that the Ukrainian outreach was sanctioned by the State Department.

Gordon Sondland

Sondland is founder and chairman of Provenance Hotels. Four companies connected to Sondland donated a combined $1 million to Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The inaugural committee has become an express lane for ambassadorships, and Sondland was tapped as envoy to the European Union last year.

The whistle-blower complaint identifies Sondland and Volker as a team that bridged the gap between the State Department and Giuliani. Beginning in May, the anonymous intelligence officer says, Volker and Sondland “sought to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the one hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other.”

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