An MSNBC host raised questions about whether Vice President Mike Pence was involved in the Trump administration’s delayed release of military aid to Ukraine.
Rachel Maddow said on her show Monday that unredacted documents, reviewed by Just Security, suggest Pence played a role in brokering a deal in which millions of dollars of congressionally approved funds would be released if Ukrainian officials announced investigations into his political rivals.
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She referred to an email exchange in which Eric Chewning, Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s chief of staff, told the acting Pentagon comptroller, who raised concerns about the hold, that they expected the issue to get “resolved” during a planned Sept. 1 meeting in Poland between Pence and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Why did he think it was all going to get sorted? … We now know that, in the defense secretary’s office, they thought that that would all click into place as soon as this meeting between Mike Pence and the Ukrainian president took place. So, it was Mike Pence who was supposed to personally get the assurance from the Ukrainian government at that meeting that they were going to announce the investigations?” Maddow told her audience.
“Because that was the deal, right? That’s what everybody was waiting on,” Maddow added.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, testified in a November impeachment hearing that he raised concerns to Pence about Ukraine aid being tied to President Trump’s push for investigations. Pence’s office denied that such a conversation ever took place and noted that other witnesses denied under oath that the vice president ever broached “potential investigations” in conversations with the Ukrainians.
The hold on the military aid continued for more than a week after the Pence-Zelensky meeting, and it was finally lifted on Sept. 11. The Ukrainians have not announced any investigations that Trump desired, including one into former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a candidate for president, and his son Hunter Biden.
After testimony by dozens of witnesses on the Ukraine matter, the Democrat-led House passed two articles of impeachment nearly three weeks ago that charged Trump with abuse of power in dealing with Ukraine and obstruction of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is withholding articles of impeachment because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled he may not call any witnesses. The Kentucky Republican plans to move ahead with rules for an impeachment trial without an agreement from Democrats.
The Pentagon announced on Monday that Chewning is leaving his post at the end of the month. He plans to return to the private sector.
Maddow, a vocal critic of Trump, has been criticized for using her MSNBC show to give overly gratuitous attention to the Trump-Russia collusion theory and British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier.
