Pence aide expected to face questions about vice president's role in Ukraine scandal

For the first time, a member of Vice President Mike Pence's staff is expected to testify Thursday in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

Pence aide Jennifer Williams, who was listening into Trump's now infamous July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is expected to testify Thursday should she receive a subpoena, CNN reports.

The House is continuing to probe whether Trump improperly withheld aid to Ukraine until its country's president announced investigations that might benefit him in the 2020 presidential election, including into a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son served on the board, as well as into supposed Ukrainian election interference that Trump seemed to hope would undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.

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During Williams' testimony, lawmakers will question "how much Pence knew" about the effort to push Ukraine to conduct these investigations, CNN reports. Williams was reportedly "concerned" about Trump's July phone call, though she reportedly did not raise these concerns to any superiors. Pence wasn't on the call, but he later met with Zelensky in September. He denies talking about the "issue of the Bidens" with Zelensky, The Wall Street Journal reports, but they reportedly discussed corruption in Ukraine during the September meeting.

The Washington Post previously reported that "officials close to Pence insist that he was unaware of Trump's efforts to press Zelensky for damaging information about Biden and his son" and that officials say Pence had his meeting with Zelensky in September "probably without having read — or at least fully registered — the transcript" of the July call. But the Post also cited former officials as saying "Pence's emphasis on corruption probably would have been interpreted by Zelensky as 'code'" for a Biden investigation, "whether the vice president intended it or not."