Nation: White House walks back confirmation of link between Ukraine aid and probe

Trump’s chief of staff walks back remarks shortly after making them

Washington — Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters Thursday that President Donald Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in part to force the government in Kyiv to investigate his political rivals, a startling acknowledgment after the president’s repeated denials of a quid pro quo.

Mulvaney defended the maneuver as “absolutely appropriate.”

“Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely, no question about that. But that’s it, that’s why we held up the money,” Mulvaney said, referring to a conspiracy theory that a hacked Democratic National Committee computer server was taken to Ukraine in 2016 to hide evidence that Kyiv, not Moscow, interfered in the last U.S. presidential election.

Mulvaney also said the funds had been withheld because European countries were being “really, really stingy when it comes to lethal aid” for Ukraine. But he characterized the decision to leverage congressionally approved aid as common practice, citing other instances in which the Trump administration has withheld aid to foreign countries and telling critics to “get over it.”

“I have news for everybody: get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” Mulvaney said. “Elections do have consequences and they should, and your foreign policy is going to change ... there’s no problem with that.”

Within hours, the Associated Press reported, Mulvaney issued a separate statement claiming his remarks were misconstrued.

“Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election,” he said. “The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server.”

Mulvaney’s news conference came as the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, met behind closed doors with House impeachment investigators, telling them that Trump outsourced the job of handling U.S. policy on Ukraine to Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, a decision that made Sondland uncomfortable but one he still carried out.

“I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen be involved in these foreign policy matters,” Sondland said, according to his prepared remarks obtained by The Washington Post.