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Defense Official Says Ukraine May Have Been Aware of Aid Hold

Defense Official Says Ukraine Was Aware of Aid Hold in July

(Bloomberg) -- A Pentagon official said Ukrainian officials began inquiring about the status of U.S. military aid as early as July, potentially punching a hole in a main argument President Donald Trump’s allies have used to defend him in the House impeachment inquiry.

Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, disclosed that her staff got questions from Ukraine relayed by the State Department about the aid on July 25 -- the same day as Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine that’s been at the center of the impeachment probe.

One State Department email said the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and the House Foreign Affairs Committee were asking about “an issue” involving security assistance, and another said Ukrainian embassy and lawmakers on Capitol Hill knew about the aid situation, she told the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

Defense Official Says Ukraine May Have Been Aware of Aid Hold

Democrats accuse Trump of withholding the aid and a White House visit for Ukraine’s president to pressure the country into announcing investigations that would benefit Trump politically. Trump’s backers have argued that there could not be any quid pro quo if Ukraine was unaware that the aid was being held up.

Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said Cooper was the third witness to testify that the Ukrainians “found out about a problem or hold in the security assistance prior to it becoming public” in late August and the first to place that recognition as far back as the day Trump had a controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Cooper said she didn’t receive the emails and wasn’t aware of them when she gave her deposition last month to a closed-door hearing of the committees leading the impeachment inquiry. She said her staff told her about them after her deposition was made public and they read it. The Trump administration has refused to comply with the committee’s demands for documents and emails.

Cooper said she learned of the hold on Ukraine’s aid in July and heard in meetings that the “president had directed the Office of Management and Budget to hold the funds because of his concerns about corruption in Ukraine.” That was despite the Defense and State departments certifying that Ukraine had taken “substantial actions” on reforms aimed at decreasing corruption and increasing accountability.

Cooper testified that she can’t be certain that the Ukrainians knew that the aid was being held up, but that was her staff’s impression. “It’s my experience with the Ukrainians they would call about specific things, not just generally checking in on the assistance package,” she said.

Catherine Croft, special adviser for Ukraine at the State Department, previously told the House committees that two Ukrainian officials raised concerns about the hold on the aid “very early on,” but wasn’t specific on the dates.

“I think it was sort of known among the circles that do Ukraine security assistance, sort of gradually,” Croft testified last month. “From July 18 on it was sort of inevitable that it was eventually going to come out.”

She said the Ukrainians had no incentive to make it public because it would be seen as “an expression of declining U.S. support for Ukraine.”

The security assistance to Ukraine “is in our national security interest to deter Russian aggression around the world,” Cooper said. “We also provide security assistance so that Ukraine can negotiate a peace with Russia from a position of strength.”

The aid, which includes weapons to resist Russia-backed separatists, was released on Sept. 11. That came after lobbying from Republicans in Congress and days after the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were flagged on a whistle-blower complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy.

Cooper and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale were the final two witnesses at Wednesday’s public hearing. Earlier in the day the committee got an inside look at how the Trump administration dealt with Ukraine from the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who was in the middle of the efforts.

Gordon Sondland told the committee that Trump, working through his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, held up a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president and military aid for the government to pressure the country’s government of Ukraine to announce an investigation designed to entangle Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival, and the Democratic Party.

“Was there a ‘quid pro quo?”’ Sondland said in his opening statement. “The answer is yes.”

Sondland further testified that other administration officials including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo were fully informed of the efforts to get Zelenskiy to appease Trump in order to set up a meeting with the president that was viewed as a vital show of support for his new government.

Pompeo and other officials denied that.

To contact the reporters on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net;Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net;Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net

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