NO QUID PRO JOE: KIEV POL
‘No clear’ link
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said that President Trump’s ambassador to the European Union did not explicitly link military aid to opening a probe into Joe Biden and his son, according to a report Thursday.
“Ambassador [Gordon] Sondland did not tell us, and did not tell me exactly, about the relation between the assistance and the investigations. You should ask him. I do not recall any conversation with me as foreign minister,” Prystaiko told journalists in Kiev, according to Interfax, a Russia-based news agency with a satellite operation in Ukraine.
“I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and security assistance,” Prystaiko continued. “Yes, the investigations were mentioned, you know, in the conversation of the presidents. But there was no clear connection between these events.”
Prystaiko’s comments came a day after William Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, testified at the House impeachment hearings.
Taylor detailed what he knew about Trump’s interest in getting the Eastern European ally to investigate Biden over his son Hunter’s high-paid gig with Ukraine’s largest natural-gas producer, Burisma, and reiterated his understanding that $391 million in US aid was withheld from Kiev unless it played ball.
Trump is accused by Democrats of freezing the security aid to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to open investigations into Joe Biden, Trump’s potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential race, as well as probe possible interference by Ukraine in the 2016 US election.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and calls the inquiry a witch hunt.
In a new disclosure, Taylor also said a member of his staff had overheard a July 26 phone call between Trump and Sondland — a hotelier who scored his post following a $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration — in which the president asked about “investigations” into the Bidens, and Sondland told him that the Ukrainians were ready to proceed.
Sondland then told Taylor’s embassy aide, David Holmes, that the president was more interested in the Biden probes than he was in Ukraine itself, according to Taylor. Holmes will be questioned by House impeachment probers behind closed doors on Friday.
Trump said Wednesday he did not remember the call, “not even a little bit.”
The Associated Press reported Thursday a second US diplomat also overheard the call, which occurred a day after Trump had asked Zelensky during a phone call for “a favor” by conducting the investigations.