With impeachment hearings set to begin on Thursday, the question is no longer whether House Democrats will vote to indict Donald Trump, but how many Senate Republicans will take a hard look at the mounting evidence of abuse of power.
A senior Pentagon official testified to impeachment investigators that she was told a “nontraditional” effort to make Ukraine commit to prosecuting anyone involved in U.S. election interference could free nearly $400 million in frozen military aid — noting that the Ukrainians would have entertained the idea only in exchange for “something valuable.”
Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense who oversaw the U.S. military assistance program for Ukraine, told lawmakers in sworn testimony that President Trump’s special envoy to Kyiv, Kurt Volker, told her about the effort on or around Aug. 20.
Volker, she said, spoke as if he had already asked an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the statement.
A transcript of Cooper’s testimony, along with those of State Department officials Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson, was released today by the House Intelligence Committee.
Croft and Anderson also are Ukraine specialists.
It was Cooper’s “very strong inference” from her conversation with Volker, who has since resigned, that the Ukrainians knew about the hold on the promised military aid long before it became public, she told impeachment investigators.
Her impression was reinforced by the fact that Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. also had sounded “alarm bells … that there were Ukrainians who knew about this,” she said.
Trump cites corruption in Kyiv and European stinginess to justify actions on Ukraine.
Neither rationale withstands close scrutiny.
Cooper’s testimony undercuts one of the key arguments from Trump’s defenders, that the administration could not have attempted to coerce Ukraine into any sort of quid pro quo because the Ukrainians had no idea the aid was being withheld.
Cooper’s testimony suggests that not only did Ukrainian leaders know the U.S. funds were being held back, but that it is possible that knowledge was being leveraged by officials in the Trump administration.
“There were two specific things that the Government of Ukraine wanted during this time frame. … [One was] a hosted visit at the White House. And the other was Ukraine security assistance,” Cooper told investigators.
The Pentagon gave its final approval in May for the military aid under its jurisdiction to be sent to Ukraine, Cooper testified.
She told investigators that the departments working on Ukraine aid were unified in their view “that this assistance was essential” and in “trying to find ways to engage the president” to free the funding once they realized it had been frozen.
“We didn’t want to signal any lack of support” for Ukraine, Cooper said, explaining that Pentagon officials worried pulling back on military assistance would send the wrong message to Russia, as Ukraine worked to negotiate a peace agreement to end a years-long civil war against Russian-backed separatists in its eastern territories.
“If they are seen as weak, and if they are seen as lacking the backing of the United States for their Armed Forces, it makes it much more difficult for them to negotiate a peace on terms that are good for Ukraine,” Cooper said.
Cooper said she became aware in mid-July that the Office of Management and Budget had frozen Ukraine’s security assistance, learning about it initially from National Security Council officials.
She sought more details from the NSC and State Department, she said, but was unable to get clarification.
The official apportionment notice from OMB did not arrive until July 25, Cooper testified — the same day Trump and Zelensky spoke via phone.
The next day, at a meeting attended by OMB national security director Michael Duffey, there was “a sense” among the deputies from the relevant U.S. governmental agencies “that there was not an understanding of how this could legally play out,” she testified.
“There were many affirmative statements that the Congress has appropriated this, we need to obligate it,” Cooper said of the Ukraine funding, noting there were concerns about a potential violation of the Impoundment Control Act.
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Acting White House chief of staff and former OMB director Mick Mulvaney said publicly last month that the delay in releasing Ukraine’s aid was caused in part by the administration’s desire to ensure the Zelensky government was doing enough to address corruption there.
This, too, was a break from the other U.S. agencies. Cooper, said that the Pentagon never did any additional anti-corruption reviews in July, August or September because officials had “affirmed that we believed sufficient progress has been made” in those areas.
The positive impression of Ukraine’s anti-corruption work was “unanimous” among the other agencies involved with Ukraine funding, Cooper added, “with the exception of he statements by OMB representatives.”