The diplomat took notes. Then he told a story.

A secret cable. A disembodied voice. A coded threat.

William Taylor, a career diplomat, went behind closed doors in the basement of the Capitol on Tuesday and told a tale that added up to the ultimate oxymoron a 10-hour bureaucratic thriller.

His plot devices were not cloak and dagger, but memos, text messages and detailed notes.

His testimony was laden with precision names, dates, places, policy statements and diplomatic nuance, not typically the stuff of intrigue. But from the moment Taylor revealed that his wife and his mentor had given him conflicting advice on whether he should even get involved, the drama began to unfold.

Their counsel split like this: Wife: no way. Mentor: do it.

The mentor won out or the story would have ended there.

Instead, on June 17, Taylor, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, arrived in Ukraine's capital of Kiev as the chief of mission. He had been recalled to service after the US ambassador to Ukraine had been forced out. That alone offered foreshadowing of troubles to come.

And, soon enough, Taylor said in his written opening statement, he discovered "a weird combination of encouraging, confusing and ultimately alarming circumstances."
Taylor was told by other US diplomats that Trump needed "to hear from" Zelenskiy before the meeting would be scheduled. And that Zelenskiy needed to make clear he was not standing in the way of "investigations."
Then things got more strange:
Toward the end of a routine July 18 video conference with National Security Council officials in Washington, "a voice on the call" from an unknown person who was off-screen announced that the Office of Management and Budget would not approve any more US security aid to Ukraine "until further notice."
Taylor summed up his tale as "a rancorous story about whistleblowers, Mr. Giuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption, and interference in elections." Democrats found it riveting, with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois describing Taylor as "like a witness out of central casting."
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, though, dismissed it as part of a "coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution."