Testimony: Ukraine knew early on of US aid freeze
Two senior US officials told House impeachment investigators that Ukrainian leaders were aware nearly US$400 million ($631.8m) in congressionally approved security assistance had been frozen well before that information became public, undercutting a key point of President Donald Trump’s “no quid pro quo” defence.
Trump’s defenders have argued that the Administration could not have leveraged the security assistance to procure a pledge from Kiev to investigate his political rivals because, they say, Ukrainian officials did not know the money was being withheld before late August, when that information first surfaced in US media reports.
But according to Catherine Croft, a Ukraine specialist at the State Department, the Ukrainians “found out very early on” that the funds had been frozen — a decision the Office of Management and Budget made at Trump’s behest and circulated to other government officials on July 18.
A transcript of Croft’s closed-door testimony from last month was released by the House Intelligence Committee yesterday along with those of Laura Cooper, a Ukraine expert at the Pentagon, and Christopher Anderson of the State Department.
Cooper, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, told impeachment investigators that Croft’s boss at the time, Kurt
Volker, had led Cooper to make a “very strong inference” that the Ukrainians knew there was a hold on the military aid long before that information was made public.
Volker, who resigned in September as Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, also told Cooper on or around August 20 that he was working through a “nontraditional” diplomatic channel to get the Ukrainian Government to commit to prosecuting people involved in US election interference — and that the aid could be released if he were successful, according to her sworn testimony to impeachment investigators.
Cooper did not know many details about Volker’s effort, but Anderson noted in his testimony that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the European Union, were involved in what many impeachment inquiry witnesses have said appeared to be a shadow effort to shape Ukraine policy.
Meanwhile, White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney plans to file his own lawsuit over testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, withdrawing his bid to join a separate case filed last month by a former Trump adviser, his attorneys said. The plans were revealed in a court filing in which Mulvaney abandoned his earlier request to become part of a suit by Charles Kupperman, Trump's former deputy national security adviser.