Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said President Trump’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, did not explicitly link military aid to Kiev with opening a probe into former veep Joe Biden and his son, according to a report Thursday.
“Ambassador Sondland did not tell us, and did not tell me exactly, about the relation between the assistance and the investigations. You should ask him. I do not recall any conversation with me as foreign minister,” Prystaiko told the journalists in Kiev on Thursday, reported Interfax, a Russia-based news agency with a satellite operation in Ukraine.
“I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and security assistance,” Prystaiko continued.
“Yes, the investigations were mentioned, you know, in the conversation of the presidents. But there was no clear connection between these events.”
Prystaiko’s comments came a day after William Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, testified in the first televised hearing of the House impeachment inquiry.
In a new disclosure revealed at the hearing, Taylor detailed what he knew about Trump’s interest in getting the Eastern European ally to investigate the Bidens, and reiterated his understanding that $391 million in US aid was withheld from Kiev unless it played ball.
Trump is accused by Democrats of freezing the security aid to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to open investigations into Joe Biden, one of Trump’s main rivals in the 2020 presidential race, as well as probe the 2016 election.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and calls the inquiry a witch hunt, but has also ordered administration staffers not to cooperate with the House Democrats’ probe.
Taylor said a member of his staff had overheard a July 26 phone call between Trump and Sondland, a hotelier who scored his post following a $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration, in which the president asked about “investigations” into the Bidens, and Sondland told him that the Ukrainians were ready to proceed.
Sondland then told the aide, State Department official David Holmes, that the president was more interested in the Biden probes than he was in Ukraine itself, according to Taylor. Holmes will be questioned by House probers behind closed doors Friday.
That call occurred a day after Trump had asked Zelensky during a phone call for “a favor” by conducting the investigations.
Republicans argued during Wednesday’s nearly six-hour hearing that there was no wrongdoing because the aid was eventually released. Democrats countered that the White House only released the congressionally approved aid after a whistleblower’s report on the call was made public.
The whistleblower’s complaint sparked the House probe, infuriating the president, who continued Thursday to demand that the person come forward.
“Where’s the Fake Whistleblower?” Trump tweeted.
The public hearings will continue Friday, when former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch — who was recalled by the president in May — is expected to testify about a smear campaign that she said was launched by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to undermine her.
With Post wires
