When Ukrainian officials found out U.S. military aid was being withheld by the White House has become a key question in the impeachment case against President Trump and whether there was a quid pro quo.
Fresh testimony in public hearings Wednesday appeared to suggest the Ukrainians had learned of the hold much earlier than previously known, after a senior Pentagon official, Laura Cooper, said the country's embassy had been asking one of her staffers about it as early as July 25. That is the same day that Trump pressed Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a phone call to investigate his Democrat rival, Joe Biden.
Ukraine has not confirmed that outreach, but an October interview given by Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Washington now appears to potentially support that sequence of events. The comments from Chaliy appear to support the idea that Ukraine’s government knew early on that there was at least an issue with the aid.
A former finance minister with a reputation as a reformer, Danyliuk was responsible for helping manage U.S. assistance until he stepped down in late September. He said he had never received any message from Chaliy about the aid. If the embassy had known, Danyliuk said he was baffled why he wouldn’t have been told or if other officials were, why they would not have reacted.
The message also appears to have gotten lost on the U.S. side. Cooper testified that Ukraine’s embassy’s inquiries did not reach her at the time and she only learned of them this month from her staff, who told her after listening to her first closed-door testimony from October. “Amazingly, news of the hold on security assistance did not leak out until August 29th. I, on the other hand, was all too aware of and still troubled by the hold,” Taylor said in his testimony.
The official said they had learned of the hold in late August from another official involved in bilateral relations but did not say when precisely.
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