This brings me to the topic of todays proceedings. I would like to recap my recollection of the timeline in which these events played out. I testified about all of this at length in my deposition. In july, i became aware of a hold being placed on obligation of the State Departments military financing or fmf and dods usai fund. In meetings i heard the president directed the Office Of Management And Budget to hold the funds because of his concern for corruption in ukraine. Let me say at the outset i have never discussed this or any other matter with the president and never heard directly from him about this matter. At a senior level meeting i attended july 26th chaired by National Council Security Leadership as in all other interagency meetings on this topic of which i was wear, the
national Security Community expressed unanimous support for resuming funding in the u. S. National security interests. At the July 26th Meeting there was also a discussion how ukrainian anticorruption efforts
the funding on contract. that contract starting the process. those contracts will be fulfilled fourth quarter perhaps or whatever it was? sir, i have to say, i m a policy official, i am not a contracting expert. but my understanding is we will be able to make up for lost time in the contracting process. fantastic. you go through three or four steps you went through because you disagreed with the hold being placed on the assistance and i certainly agree with that. did you get any kind of criticism with the folks you dealt with because you were going against omb s direction for putting a hold on that? did you get criticized for that? absolutely not. my entire chain of command was supportive of advocating for removing the hold on the funds? you weren t restricted on full throating advocating getting this hold lifted, were you? no, sir. i faced no restrictions.
obligate means you re putting the funding on contract and you re starting the process. those contracts will be fulfilled fourth quarter, perhaps, whatever it was? sir, i have to say i m a policy official. i am not a contracting expert. but my understanding is that we will be able to make up for lost time in the contracting process. fantastic. you go through three or four steps as you went to, because you disagreed with the hold being placed on the assistance, and i certainly agree with that but did you get any kind of criticism from the folks that you deal with because you were going against the omb s direction for putting a hold on that, did you get criticized at all for that? absolutely not. my entire team of command was supportive of advocating for removing the hold on the funds. you weren t restricted on full-throated advocating on behalf of getting this hold lifted, were you? no, sir, i faced no