WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st November, 2019) National Security Council (NSC) officials received no explanation as to why President Donald Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine shortly after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani began directing US policy in that country, a senior diplomat at the US Embassy in Kiev, David Holmes, said in a congressional testimony on Thursday.
"I was present in the Embassy conference room for the National Security Council secure video conference call July 18 when an Office of Management and Budget [OMB] staff members surprisingly announced the hold on Ukraine security assistance near the end of an almost two-hour meeting," Holmes told the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee during a public hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Trump.
An OMB official explained that "the order had come from the president and had been conveyed to OMB, by White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney with no further explanation," Holmes said.
"NSC counterparts affirmed that there had been no change in our Ukraine policy, but could not determine the cause of the hold or how to lift it," Homes added.
The aid freeze has become a key issue in the impeachment inquiry against Trump since the action coincided with a Trump request to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an investigation of corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Democrats accuse Trump of using his position to enlist a foreign government to take down Biden, a rival for the presidency in the 2020 elections.
Holmes also testified that a de facto shift in US policy began the previous spring, when a team led by Giuliani began enlisting Ukrainian officials to investigate Bursima, an energy company that employed Biden's son, Hunter, on its board of directors.
Biden has admitted ordering Ukraine to fire a prosecutor in charge of an earlier investigation of Bursima as a condition for Ukraine to receive $1 billion in US military aid.
