Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, has resigned one day after the release of a whistleblower report alleging a coverup by the White House of a call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President, three sources familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN.
Volker was named in the report. The State Department has not returned messages seeking comment.
The State Press, the school paper of Arizona State University, first reported Volker's resignation.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs at The New York Times:
Kurt D. Volker has traveled halfway around the world as a United States diplomat. He has met with world leaders, negotiated foreign policy and served under multiple American presidents.
But when he abruptly resigned from his job as the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine, it wasn’t an international broadcaster or national newspaper that had the scoop.
It was a 20-year-old junior at Arizona State University who broke the news in the school’s student newspaper.
Mr. Volker serves as executive director of the McCain Institute, a think tank in Washington that is run by Arizona State University. When reporters at the student newspaper, The State Press, discovered the connection, they began looking into Mr. Volker and, on Friday evening, confirmed with an unnamed school official that the ambassador had resigned.
Andrew Howard, a managing editor of The State Press, said he hadn’t set out to write a story that would be followed by reporters from dozens of major media outlets, including The New York Times. He had just been doing his job: covering the university.
“I didn’t take a different approach to this story than any other,” Mr. Howard said shortly after waking up to a flood of congratulatory texts on Saturday morning. “Everyone’s looking for an ‘aha’ moment that I don’t think was there.”
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