Ukrainian officials were aware of a freeze on U.S. military aid by the first week of August, according to a new report, contradicting claims by U.S. officials that the Ukrainians were not aware of the freeze until the end of the month.
Ukrainian officials being aware of the military aid pause by early August would confirm another part of the complaint filed on Aug. 12 by a yet-unknown intelligence community whistleblower.
“As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy,” the Ukraine whistleblower wrote. “But I do not know how or when they learned of it.”
These unnamed members of Ukraine’s government were told the freeze was no accident and were directed to reach out to acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to fix the problem, according to records obtained by the New York Times. Mulvaney said he didn’t speak with any Ukrainians about it.
Officials both in the U.S. and Ukraine previously asserted Ukraine didn’t know about the pause on aid until a Politico article made the freeze public on August 28, but the new report Wednesday stated there are documents and interviews which tell a different story. A new report from the Associated Press on Wednesday stated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was worried about pressure from President Trump to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden as early as the first week of May.
William Taylor, the Acting Ambassador to Ukraine, testified Tuesday that he was told on Sept. 1 that “everything,” including military aid, was contingent upon a public announcement from Zelensky that his country would investigate both alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election as well as Burisma Holdings, an energy company that paid Joe Biden’s son Hunter $50,000 per month to sit on its board.
Trump responded on Twitter on Wednesday morning by quoting Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe, tweeting that “neither he (Taylor) or any other witness has provided testimony that the Ukrainians were aware that military aid was being withheld” and that “you can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo.”
But the new report from the New York Times suggests at least some in the Ukrainian government were aware of the hold on aid for weeks while Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland pushed Ukraine to investigate a variety of issues. Meantime, State Department diplomats repeatedly communicating to the Ukrainians the Trump administration’s desire for Zelensky to publicly declare his intent to launch probes into 2016 and the Bidens.
The whistleblower wrote that officials at the Office of Management and Budget — run by Mulvaney — stated in July 23 and July 26 meetings that “the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the President.” Trump’s controversial phone call with Zelensky took place on July 25. During that call, Trump asked Zelesnky for a “favor,” which was to look into a CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and alleged Ukranian involvement in the 2016 election, immediately after Zelensky expressed interest in purchasing anti-tank weaponry, known as Javelins. Trump urged Zelensky later in the call to investigate “the other thing,” referring to allegations of corruption related to the Bidens.
Taylor testified on Wednesday that a National Security Council call on July 18 included OMB staffers claiming they’d been instructed “not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice.”
The New York Times reported that discussions between the U.S. and Ukraine in early August “did not explicitly link the assistance freeze to the push by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani for the investigations” but that those talks touched on the need to alert top Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak, who was talking with Giuliani and State Department diplomats about the Trump administration’s desire for investigations.
Zelensky repeatedly said he felt no pressure from Trump, saying “nobody pushed me” and there was “no blackmail.”
Mulvaney is named in the New York Times as the go-to for Ukrainian officials after, in a rare press conference last Thursday, Mulvaney admitted that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine partly because the president wanted Ukraine to investigate the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s servers.
Mulvaney said the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Ukraine “was held up temporarily” for three “completely legitimate” reasons: “the corruption in the country, whether other countries were participating in support of the Ukraine, and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice.”
