WASHINGTON (AP) The view among the national security officials was unanimous: Military aid to Ukraine should not be stopped. But President Donald Trumps acting chief of staff thought otherwise.
As the aid was being blocked this summer, Ukraine officials began quietly asking the State Department about the holdup. The concern was clear for the young democracy battling an aggressive Russia.
If this were public in Ukraine it would be seen as a reversal of our policy, said Catherine Croft, the special adviser for Ukraine at State, who fielded the inquiries from the Ukrainians.
This would be a really big deal, she testified. It would be a really big deal in Ukraine, and an expression of declining U.S. support for Ukraine.
Crofts remarks were among the transcripts released Monday from the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.
And they begin to chisel away at a key Republican defense of Trump. Allies of the president say Trump did nothing wrong because the Ukrainians never knew the aid was being delayed.
Eventually, the White House released its hold and the funds were sent to the ally.
The impeachment inquiry is looking at whether Trump violated his oath of office by holding back the congressionally approved funds while he asked the new Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor to investigate political rival Joe Bidens family and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Transcripts of testimony from closed-door interviews with Croft and another Ukraine specialist at State, Christoper Anderson, as well as the Defense Departments Laura Cooper, come as House Democrats are pushing ahead to this weeks live public hearings.
Cooper told investigators that, in a series of July meetings at the White House, she came to understand that Trumps acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was holding up the military aid for the U.S. ally.
There was just this issue of the White House chief of staff has conveyed that the president has concerns about Ukraine, she said.
When she and others tried to get an explanation, they found none.
We did not get clarification, she said.
My sense is that all of the senior leaders of the U.S. national security departments and agencies were all unified in their in their view that this assistance was essential, said Cooper, an assistant defense secretary. And they were trying to find ways to engage the President on this.
Croft and Anderson testified about the oversized reach of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani into foreign policy on Ukraine in unsettling ways as he portrayed Zelenskiys new government as an enemy of Trump.
