and sondland working with ambassador taylor who would be the ones doing the continual work here. in midsummer trump ordered a suspension of military aid to ukraine, despite the fact the aide had been authorized and appropriated by congress and that the defense department in consultation with the state department had certified ukraine met all of the necessary requirements to receive the aid including anti-corruption reform. the aid was in the national interests of the united states and critical to ukraine s security. the country that had been invaded by russia. from her office in the pentagon, miss cooper oversaw significant amount of security assistance flowing to ukraine and was involved in efforts to understand and reverse the suspension of nearly $400 million in u.s. aide. cooper along with others learned about the freeze during a series of interagency meetings in the last two weeks of july. at the first meeting, on july
i bring to my daily work and to this proceeding my sense of duty to u.s. national security, not to any political party. i have probably served to democratic and to do. i entered government service through the internship working on counterterrorism in europe and the former soviet union. working on a defense s rotational assignment, i decided to accept a civil service position in the policy organization of the office of the secretary of defense in january 2001 where i am remained for the past 18 years. my strong sense of pride in serving my country and dedication to my pentagon colleagues were cemented in the moments after i felt the pentagon shake beneath me on september 11, 2001. my office was scheduled to move into the section of the pentagon that was destroyed in the
i thank the gentleman. we are joined by david hale and laura cooper. david hale serves as the undersecretary of state for political affairs for the department of state, a position he s held since august 30, 2018. mr. hale joined the foreign service in 1994 and holds the rank of career ambassador. he previously served as ambassador to pakistan, ambassador to lebanon, special envoy for middle east peace, deputy special envoy and ambassador to jordan. ambassador hale also served as deputy assistant secretary of state and executive assistant to secretary of state albright. laura cooper is the deputy assistant assistant secretary of defense for russia, ukraine, and eurasia at the department of defense. she is a crewmember of the senior executive service. ms. cooper previously has served as a principal director in the office of the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security affairs. prior to joining the department
the office backdated the forms to make them appear as if they were published a month before. democrats then took the extremely rare step of pushing a whistle-blower complaint into the public. using it as the centerpiece of their impeachment crusade. we later learned that democratic staff had prior coordination with the whistle-blower, the though the democrats themselves had united on national television. following that revelation, democrats did a dramatic about-face. they suddenly drop their insistence that the whistle-blower testified to us and rejected our request to hear from him. then, in the hearing yesterday, the democrats cut off our questions and accused us of trying to out the whistle-blower. even though they claim they don t even know who he is.
to the ukrainians, we support the ukrainians, we are for national security, this does not rise to an impeachable offense and i think that is where the republicans are probably most successful after this. they may get an off-ramp from the ig report. greg, did you wake up at 9:00 and watch the hearings minute-by-minute? greg: first i woke up at 9:00 and that i walked home. i spent a lot of time trying to understand why i understand this better than most people in the media, and it s because i ran stuff for a living. if you manage things. we talked about this earlier in your office, we talked about how anyone who is involved in management, hiring or firing or dealing with budgets, dealing with human resources, we look at this going like, wow, this is just how the world works. and you understand how so many people in the media don t have a talent stack. they have a singular, vertical