SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The view among the national security officials was unanimous: Military aid to Ukraine should not be stopped. But the White House's acting chief of staff thought otherwise.
That was the testimony of Laura Cooper, a Defense Department official, whose deposition was released Monday in the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.
"My sense is that all of the senior leaders of the US national security departments and agencies were all unified in their - in their view that this assistance was essential," she said. "And they were trying to find ways to engage the president on this."
Cooper's testimony was among several hundred pages of transcripts released Monday, along with those of State Department officials Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson.
Cooper told investigators that, in a series of July meetings at the White House, she came to understand that Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was holding up the military aid for the US ally.
[...] When she and others tried to get an explanation, they found none.
[...] She said it was "unusual" to have congressional funds suddenly halted that way, and aides raised concerns about the legality of it. The Pentagon was "concerned" about the hold-up of funds and "any signal that we would send to Ukraine about a wavering in our commitment", she said.
Cooper told investigators that she was visited in August by Kurt Volker, the US special envoy to Ukraine, who explained there was a "statement" that the Ukraine government could make to get the security money flowing.
[...] "Somehow, an effort that he was engaged in to see if there was a statement that the government of Ukraine would make," said Cooper, an assistant defence secretary, "that would somehow disavow any interference in US elections and would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election interference."
For a handy reference to the documents that have been released concerning this, npr has posted Trump Impeachment Inquiry: A Guide To Key People, Facts And Documents:
Written words are central to the Ukraine affair. The significance of the whistleblower's original complaint and the White House's record of its call with Ukraine are debated, but the text is public. Here are the documents to refer to as the inquiry proceeds:
Texts and memos
- Call:The White House memorandum (Sept. 25)
- Aid:The Pentagon letter on military aid to Ukraine (Sept. 25)
- Complaint:The whistleblower complaint (Sept. 26)
- Texts:Batch of texts between diplomats released by House Democrats (Oct. 4)
The whistleblower's complaint has largely been corroborated by witness testimony, public statements and media reports. See how the document checks out — with a detailed annotation of the text.
Testimony released by Congress following closed depositions
- Christopher Anderson, former special adviser for Ukraine negotiations
- Laura Cooper,deputy defense secretary
- Catherine Croft, former Ukraine adviser on the National Security Council
- Fiona Hill, former White House adviser on Russia
- George Kent, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs
- Michael McKinley, former State Department adviser
- Gordon Sondland,U.S. ambassador to EU
- William Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine
- Alexander Vindman, top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council
- Kurt Volker, former Ukraine envoy
- Marie Yovanovitch, ex-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:25AM
Because Clinton and Obama put al-Qaeda [discoverthenetworks.org] in charge [shoebat.com] of them in exchange for "angel investments" in businesses that are heavy Democratic donors, who would agree to enact policies banning conservatives and the non-gullible from their workplaces and media properties. The secret "Angel Investors" that Silicon Valley has been so gaga over for the past decade are the bin Laden / BCCI network funneled through Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the Rothschilds [archive.is].
The Conservatives in the UK did the same thing. The police association Common Purpose is AQ in the UK, sponsored by Qatar [archive.is]. Bill Gates and his Carnegie friends sold the Common Core program to Qatar which is why school is so fucked these days. It's the exact same people who put Jamal Khashoggi [spectator.us] in the Washington Post. And you might have heard about the mess [encyclopediadramatica.rs] that happened when Gates put a terrorist [frontpagemag.com] on Microsoft's board [deepfreeze.it] and forced everyone in the company to agree with his propaganda. And there was a Saudi psyops specialist [archive.is] in the mix, a good friend of Brennan and Mifsud.
So if you remember people on the right saying that Brennan is a Muslim spy or Obama is a secret Muslim, the correct answer turned out to be all of them are. The entire Obama executive branch several people deep is guilty of the highest possible treason, as is former Secretary of State Madeline Albright. And they're keeping it going because it's making them money and no one is stopping them.