The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
White House gives mixed message on Ukraine assistance
Official indicates, then denies, link between aid, inquiry into Democrats.
WASHINGTON — The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Donald Trump’s decision to hold up military aid to Ukraine was linked to his demand that Kyiv investigate the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Trump did nothing improper because he was asking for help investigating a prior election, not seeking assistance with the 2020 contest. It’s illegal to seek or receive foreign help of value in a U.S. election.
Hours later, Mulvaney tried to walk back his comments in an official statement blaming the media for misconstruing his words “to advance a biased and
political witch hunt against President Trump.”
But the initial comments raised questions at the Justice Department and brought swift rebuke from Democrats, who cast his words as an admission of wrongdoing.
In the White House’s most detailed explanation of the decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine, Mulvaney said the president’s move was part of efforts to clean up corruption in the Eastern European country. He appeared to be referring to conspiracy theories about a purported Ukrainian link to Russia’s hack of the DNC during the last presidential election.
“The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation,” Mulvaney told reporters in the White House briefing room.
“Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption that related to the DNC server? Absolutely, no question about that,” Mulvaney continued. “That’s why we held up the money.”
Mulvaney’s remarks suggested a connection between the military aid and the request for an investigation — but a different one than Democrats initially highlighted at the start of the impeachment probe. Mulvaney denied there was a quid pro quo and said, “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”
He pointed to the example of the administration holding up aid to Central American countries to force them to change their policies on immigration.
Mulvaney said the 2016 election investigation was one of several reasons Trump held up nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, including a desire for European nations to increase their own assistance to Kyiv.
As for complaints about mixing politics with foreign policy, Mulvaney had a blunt rejoinder: “I have news for everybody: get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.
“Elections do have consequences and they should, and your foreign policy is going to change … there’s no problem with that,” he said.
Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow issued a pointed statement distancing the president’s legal team from Mulvaney’s comments.
“The President’s legal counsel was not involved in acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s press briefing,” it said.
Mulvaney later issued a statement seeking to clarify his comments.
“Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election,” he said. “There was never any connection between the funds and the Ukrainians doing anything with the server ... there was never any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.”
However, Mulvaney at the briefing had directly cited questions about the DNC server as a reason the money for Ukraine was being held up.
Democrats are probing whether Trump sought Ukraine’s help with investigating unsubstantiated corruption allegations about Democratic rival Joe Biden and other allegations from a government whistleblower’s compliant.
A rough transcript of a July call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shows the U.S. leader raised both Biden and the DNC hack.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee leading the impeachment probe, said, “I think Mr. Mulvaney’s acknowledgment means that things have gone from very, very bad to much, much worse.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Mulvaney “co-signed the president’s confession.”
Unfounded conspiracy theories about a Ukraine link to the DNC hack began circulating almost immediately after it was discovered. Some propagated by Russian media and online included mention of a supposed “hidden DNC server,” which supporters of the Republican political operative Roger Stone picked up and circulated.
Mulvaney defended Trump’s actions by casting them as part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation looking into the origins of another probe: the counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
But a senior official at the Justice Department said if the White House was withholding aid in regard to cooperation with any investigation at the department, that was news to them.
The official was not unauthorized to discuss the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity.