Kurt Volker: Trump's former Ukraine envoy giving evidence to impeachment committees

President's ex-special envoy testifies amid impeachment inquiry after abruptly resigning from his post last week

Donald Trump’s former US special representative for Ukraine is testifying before congressional committees investigating the president over allegations he abused his power and withheld financial aid to the country while asking for dirt on a political rival.

Kurt Volker, who abruptly resigned from his post last week, is voluntarily giving evidence about Mr Trump’s interactions with Ukraine after the White House released a memorandum of a phone call in which the president seemingly urged his Ukrainian counterpart to launch an investigation into Joe Biden.

Mr Volker resigned after his name surfaced in a whistleblower complaint about that phone call, alleging that Mr Trump sought to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the former vice president, his son, Hunter Biden, and a Ukrainian energy firm called Burisma.

The younger Mr Biden was a Burisma board director until departing before his father announced his campaign for the presidency in April. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son, and the Ukrainian firm has not been convicted of any criminal activities.

The intelligence community whistleblower’s report says Mr Volker provided advice to Ukrainian leaders about how to “navigate” Mr Trump’s demands for a Ukrainian government probe of the Bidens and Burisma.

Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney. has said Mr Volker offered to put him in touch with an aide to the Ukrainian president.

The deposition comes just after reports revealed Mr Volker met with a top official from Burisma last year, even as Mr Giuliani was pressing Ukraine’s government to investigate the company and the Bidens' involvement with it.

Mr Volker reported met in September 2018 with Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of directors of Burisma, on the sidelines of an event held by a Washington-based foreign policy think tank.

The September 2018 encounter was likely to be a subject of questioning during his testimony on Capitol Hill after photos from the event on the Burisma website showed the two men together.

The encounter also highlighted the dissonance between Mr Giuliani’s assertions on Twitter that Burisma was a “corrupt company” and demands that the Bidens’ role be investigated, and the envoy’s efforts to conduct day-to-day relations with Ukraine’s government and corporate interests.

Details of the pair’s meeting was not immediately available, though Burisma said in a statement that Mr Pozharskyi “held a number of meetings with US officials”.

The Associated Press contributed to this report