Trump impeachment: Security establishment said US military aid to Ukraine was vital, testifies top defence official
Testimony is latest witness deposition to be made public
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Your support makes all the difference.America’s security establishment believed US military aid to Ukraine was vital and should not be jeopardised, a senior defence official told impeachment investigators probing Donald Trump.
Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary of defence, told members of Congress that her department was “concerned” with delaying aid to Ukraine.
“DoD was concerned about the obligation of funds. Policy, my team, we were also concerned about any signal that we would send to Ukraine about a wavering in our commitment,” she said.
She added: “And that’s another reason why, I mean, we did not want for this to be a big public discussion, you know, if we were about to get it turned back on again because we didn’t want to signal any lack of support.”
Ms Cooper told investigators that soon after a meeting of national security officials at the White House, she was visited 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.
Ms Cooper is the latest official whose private testimony has now been made public, as Democrats prepare for open testimony from three witnesses this week, starting on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump was subjected to chants of “lock him up” as he addressed New York City’s Veterans Day parade after hitting out at House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, the top Democrat spearheading the impeachment inquiry, accusing him of releasing “doctored transcripts” of witness depositions.
A lawyer for Lev Parnas, an associate of Mr Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, has meanwhile told The New York Times his client was tasked with offering Ukraine US military aid in exchange for a corruption investigation into 2020 candidate Joe Biden and his son.
As Mr Giuliani denies the claim, the president has called on his fellow Republicans not to fall into the “fools trap” of questioning his 25 July call with the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenksy.
Please look below to see how the day’s drama played out
Trump to address New York City Veterans Day Parade
Donald and Melania Trump return to New York City today - after recently abandoning his old home town to make Florida their permanent place of residence - to address the Veterans Day Parade shortly from Madison Square Park.
They will also lay a wreath in memory of the dead before scuttling off to Trump Tower.
While Trump has his supporters in the US military, his own failure to serve in the Vietnam War counts against him with many while stories like the below - raised by an actual veteran in the shape of Mayor Pete - hardly help his image.
Protesters out in force ahead of Trump speech in New York
Even on Veterans Day, our boy can't catch a break.
(Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty)
(Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty)
(Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty)
(Stephanie Keith/Getty)
Trump forced to be gracious to Bill de Blasio as he pays tribute to America's military veterans
Trump is now addressing the Veterans Day gathering in NYC, becoming the first sitting president to attend the ceremony and having to be nice to mayor Bill de Blasio, whom he teased relentlessly when he dropped out of the 2020 race in September.
Here's our story on the chanting.
Trump says US stands by Gold Star families despite ugly feud with grieving Khizr and Ghazala Khan in 2016
In the middle of his stories of American military valour across the decades in his short address, Trump expressed his support for Gold Star families, glossing over his attack on the bereaved Khizr and Ghazala Khan in 2016, who had rebuked him at that year's Democratic National Convention after their son, army captain Humayun Khan, had been killed in the Iraq War.
Their criticism led Trump to respond that their speech had been written by Hillary Clinton's staffers and make an Islamophobic comment about Ghazala Khan's silence while her husband spoke, brandishing his copy of the US Constitution and offering to lend it to Trump.
The president and first lady then laid a centennial wreath at the foot of the park's Eternal Light Monument before observing a minute's silence.
And that's that! Short and sweet from Mr T.
AOC's Instagram video surprising Bernie Sanders goes viral
Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently backed Vermont senator Bernie Sanders for the 2020 nomination, throwing her considerable influence among young progressives behind the veteran socialist.
A pretty adorable (or cloying, deeping on your point of view) video of her surprising Bernie on the campaign trail in Iowa is doing the rounds on Twitter.
Darren Richman has more.
Don Jr takes swipe at UCLA after book tour turns heated
The president's eldest son appears to be having a pop at UCLA here after the unpleasant contretemps that took place on his book tour over the weekend.
Nikki Haley details disagreements with Trump over Kim Jong-un, Helsinki summit
A few more points of interest from Nikki Haley's new book on Kim Jong-un, Putin and the Helsinki summit of July 2018.
Some news from the Associated Press out today:
Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil and gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to the country’s new president.
Perry’s efforts to influence Ukraine’s energy policy came earlier this year, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s new government was seeking military aid from the United States to defend against Russian aggression and allies of President Donald Trump were ramping up efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Ukraine awarded the contract to Perry’s supporters little more than a month after the U.S. energy secretary attended Zelenskiy’s May inauguration. In a meeting during that trip, Perry handed the new president a list of people he recommended as energy advisers. One of the four names was his longtime political backer Michael Bleyzer.
A week later, Bleyzer and his partner Alex Cranberg submitted a bid to drill for oil and gas at a sprawling government-controlled site called Varvynska. They offered millions of dollars less to the Ukrainian government than their only competitor for the drilling rights, according to internal Ukrainian government documents obtained by The Associated Press. But their newly created joint venture, Ukrainian Energy, was awarded the 50-year contract because a government-appointed commission determined they had greater technical expertise and stronger financial backing, the documents show.
Perry likely had outsized influence in Ukraine. Testimony in the impeachment inquiry into Trump shows the energy secretary was one of three key U.S. officials who were negotiating a meeting between Trump and the Ukrainian leader.
White House and State Department officials have testified that the president would only meet with Zelenskiy if he committed to launching an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. In the impeachment inquiry against Trump, the officials have also said that U.S. military aid to Ukraine was being withheld until Zelenskiy publicly announced such an investigation.
The sequence of events suggests the Trump administration’s political maneuvering in Ukraine was entwined with the big business of the energy trade.
Perry made clear during trips to Kyiv that he was close to Bleyzer, a Ukrainian-American investor and longtime Perry supporter who lives in Houston, and Cranberg, a Republican mega-donor who provided Perry the use of a luxury corporate jet during the energy secretary’s failed 2012 presidential bid.
Perry’s spokeswoman said Wednesday that the energy secretary has championed the American energy industry all over the world, including in Ukraine.
“What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” said Shaylyn Hynes, the press secretary for the Energy Department.
Jessica Tillipman, who teaches anti-corruption law at George Washington University, said even if Perry did seek to influence foreign officials to award contracts to his friends, it is likely not illegal.
“My gut says it’s no crime,” she said. “It’s just icky.”
Zelenskiy’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement to AP, Bleyzer denied that Perry helped his firm get the gas deal.
“I believe that Secretary Perry’s conversations with Ukrainian government officials, if they in fact took place, did not play any role in Ukrainian Energy winning its bid,” Bleyzer said Tuesday. He said the process was competitive and transparent and “will hopefully serve as an example of how the Ukrainian energy market can be opened for new investments.”
Amy Flakne, a lawyer for Cranberg’s company Aspect Holdings, said Wednesday that Perry and other U.S. officials supported “a fair, competitive process to bring foreign capital and technology to Ukraine’s lagging energy sector.”
“Aspect neither sought, nor to our knowledge received, special intervention on its behalf,” Flakne said.
In honour of Veteran's Day, Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has written an op-ed in the New York Daily News. Here's an excerpt:
Like so many Americans, the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, is what motivated me to join the Army National Guard — to defeat the evil that visited us on that day. I enlisted out of a deep conviction that service above self is our highest calling.
Throughout over 16 years as a soldier, first as a private and now as a major — including two deployments to the Middle East — I forged lifelong bonds with so many brave patriots. Even in the most dire of circumstances, the best of humanity shines through.
But politicians in both parties have failed to truly honor their sacrifices. Serving in a medical unit in Iraq, I saw firsthand the terribly high costs of disastrous interventionist policies launched in the naive and wrongheaded belief that we should police the world and impose our will on foreign societies through brute force.
The rest of this op-ed can be viewed here.
On the 2020 campaign trail, Democratic candidate Julián Castro has argued that the first two states in the nominating process — Iowa and New Hampshire — should lose their status as the first states in the nation to vote on candidates.
Other states that are more diverse, and less white, should replace them, he said during an appearance on MSNBC.
“Demographically, it’s not reflective of the U.S. as a whole, certainly not reflective of the Democratic Party, and I believe other states should have their chance,” Mr Castro said.
“So yes, of course we need to find other states. That doesn’t mean that Iowa and New Hampshire can’t still play an important role. But I don’t believe that forever we should be married to Iowa and New Hampshire going first.”
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