2 days after a whistleblower secretly filed a complaint about President Trump's dealings with Ukraine in August, 2 top congressional staffers arrived in Kyiv on a routine business trip that ended up setting off alarm bells on Capitol Hill.
The hunt to find out why the money wasn't moving played out on Capitol Hill and across several federal agencies at the same time the whistleblower complaint was quietly winding its way through separate government channels in August and early September, and it illustrates the difficulty anyone connected to the administration would have in hiding a purported plot to withhold federal funds.
The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, and career Foreign Service officer George Kent, behind, testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 13, 2019.The pause in funding spilled into public view on Aug. 28, two weeks after the congressional aides arrived in Kyiv, when Politico published an article in which an unnamed senior administration officialpending a review of whether its release was deemed in the best interests of the United States.
On the same day that he was told of the"urgent concern" matter, Schiff and the chairmen of two other committees sent White House counsel Pat Cipollone a letter demanding that the administration preserve and transmit records related to the possible withholding of aid to Ukraine as a means of forcing that country to open investigations into Joe Biden — a leading contender to challenge Trump in 2020 — and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
While Trump and his allies argue there's"no harm, no foul" because Ukraine ultimately got its aid, the behind-the-scenes machinations in Congress reveal just how tenuous the situation became, with the flow of aid not resuming until after lawmakers began asking questions. "Thanks obviously to the Congress we got the language in the continuing resolution that thankfully will enable us to obligate all of the funding, ultimately," Cooper told the House in her closed-door deposition.
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