President Donald Trump’s former top adviser for Russian and European affairs arrived on Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify to House impeachment investigators , a day after leaving his job at the White House.
Tim Morrison, the first White House political appointee to testify, didn’t respond to reporters’ questions about his testimony, which takes place behind closed doors, but his information might be central to a push to remove the president from office.
Morrison, who served on the National Security Council, stepped down from that post Wednesday, and a senior administration official said he “decided to pursue other opportunities.”
The official, who was not authorised to discuss Morrison’s job and spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said Morrison has been considering leaving the administration for “some time.”
He has been in the spotlight since August when a government whistleblower said multiple U.S. Officials had said Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US Election.”
Morrison will be asked to explain that “sinking feeling” he got when Trump demanded that Ukraine’s president investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and meddling in the 2016 election.
Morrison was brought on board by then-national security adviser John Bolton to address arms control matters and later shifted into his current role as a top Russia and Europe adviser.
It was there that he stepped into the thick of an in-house squabble about the activities of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who had been conversing with Ukrainian leaders outside of traditional US diplomatic circles.