Mulvaney says there was a quid pro quo in Trump holding back military aid to Ukraine — but it did not relate to Biden probe
PUBLISHED AN HOUR AGOUPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Dan Mangan @_DANMANGAN
cnbc.com
KEY POINTS
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said President Donad Trump did not withhold military aid to Ukraine as part of a quid pro quo to get that country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
Instead, Mulvaney said, that withholding of aid was due in part because Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate the possibility that elements in that country had somehow interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
At the same press conference Thursday, Mulvaney said that the United States had selected a Trump resort property in Florida, Trump National Doral Miami, next June.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that President Donald Trump did not withhold military aid to Ukraine as part of a quid pro quo to get that country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
Instead, Mulvaney told reporters, that the withholding of aid this summer was due in part because Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate the possibility that elements in that country somehow had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Trump’s detriment.
“The money held up had absolutely nothing to do with Biden,” Mulvaney said
Instead, he said, the withholding of aid came in connection with “an ongoing investigation into the 2016 election,” and the possibility that a Democratic National Committee server that investigators have said was hacked by Russian agents ended up in Ukraine.
While Mulvaney did not himself use the term “quid pro quo,” when he was told by a reporter during a White House press conference that the situation of withholding aid to get Ukraine was in fact a quid pro quo, Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time.”
“You’re saying the president of the US can’t ask someone to help with an ongoing public investigation?” Mulvaney said.
The idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election is a conspiracy theory often promoted by supporters of Trump. It relates in part to the suspicion that Ukrainians revealed actual or false financial information about Paul Manafort, the longtime Republican operative who had led Trump’s campaign for several months, and how had worked for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.
Federal investigators and intelligence agencies have said that Russian agents — not Ukrainian agents — interfered in the election to help Trump’s candidacy and hurt that of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The House is conducting an impeachment inquiry of Trump because of belief among congressional Democrats that the president used military aid and the potential of a meeting with Trump to pressure Ukraine’s new president to launch an investigation of Biden.
Biden who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have argued that Biden, while serving as vice president, pressured Ukraine to dismiss a prosecutor in that country in order to thwart a supposed investigation into a Ukraine natural gas company on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter, served.
There is no evidence that Hunter Biden was or would have been eyed in such a probe. And Joe Biden’s pressure on Ukraine to terminate the prosecutor was in line with moves by other European countries that believed the prosecutor was not doing enough to target corruption in Ukraine.
On Thursday, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was expected to tell House investigators that he had called Trump directly after hearing “many versions of speculation that had been circulating” about why military aid had been withheld from Ukraine.
“I asked the president: ‘What do you want from Ukraine?’” Sondland said in a copy of his planned statement to the House. “The president responded: ‘Nothing. There is no quid pro quo.’”
“The president repeated: ‘no quid pro quo’ multiple times,” Sondland planned to testify. “This was a very short call. And I recall the president was in a bad mood.”
Eamon Javers
@EamonJavers
· 1h
Replying to @EamonJavers
This seems to be a significant change of defense by the White House - no longer arguing there was “no quid pro quo,” but arguing that there was a quid pro quo and that was fine.
Eamon Javers
@EamonJavers
Mulvaney is arguing that the quid pro quo for holding back the Ukraine money had nothing to do with the Bidens, but it did have to do with a look back to 2016.
50
6:05 PM - Oct 17, 2019
Eamon Javers
@EamonJavers
· 1h
Mulvaney on Ukraine: says the request for a look back to what happened in 2016 WAS part of the reason why Trump held up military aid to Ukraine. The president has previously denied that. Says “we do that all the time with foreign policy.”
View image on Twitter
Eamon Javers
@EamonJavers
This seems to be a significant change of defense by the White House - no longer arguing there was “no quid pro quo,” but arguing that there was a quid pro quo and that was fine.
148
6:02 PM - Oct 17, 2019
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