florida, for abevent pn event p usmca. president trump and president zelensky met duringtr the unite nations general assembly. the two met without ukraine ever taking action on investigations. according to ambassador taylor, there was no discussion of investigations during this meeting.io i will now turn to the second assertion that president trump withheld taxpayer funded security assistance to ukraine as a way of pressuring zelensky to conduct these investigations. here too context is critically important. president trump has been assistance foreignly in general and believed quite strongly that our european cal li allies should share the burden. u.s. security assistance is conditioned toce countries arou the world and that u.s. aid including aid to ukraine has
i t had and have no concerns. lieutenant colonel vindman s superior tim morrison testified that he was concerned the call would leak and be misused in washington s political process, but p he did not believe that anything discussed onot the cal wase illegal or improper. much has also been made about president trump s reference on thep july 25th call to hunter biden s position on the board of burisma, a corrupt ukrainian energy company. and the actions of certain ukrainianon officials in the rup to thefi 2016 election. democrats dismissed these conspiracy theories to suggest that the president has no legitimate reason othernt than s own political interests to raise theses issues with president zelensky. the idevidence, however, shows
merely presuming that there was at link. president trump too rejected any linkage between security assistance to ukraine and investigations. the president s statements in this regard ought to be persuasive because he made the same statement in two separate private conversations with two different u.s. officials ten daysia apart. there would be no reason for the president to be anything less than candid during these private conversations. on august 31st president trump spoke by phone with senator johnson who was traveling to ukraine in the coming days and sought the president s permission to tell president zelensky that the security assistance would be forthcoming. president trump responded that he was not ready to do that, citing ukrainian corruption and burdenai sharing among european allies. when senator johnson raised the potential linkage between security assistance and investigation, president trump
kyiv denied awareness of the he pause. the article explained that then ukrainian ambassador went rogue and did not inform president zelensky that there was any issue with the aid. president zelensky and his senior team only learned of a pause when it was reported on august 28th. as ambassador volker testified because senior ukraine officials were aiunaware of the pause, the wase no leverage implied. the actions of senior ukrainian officials while it was paused reaches a conclusion that they did not know the aid was on hold. in the 55 days during which the security assistance was paused, president zelensky had five discussions with u.s. senior officials. july 25th he spoke with president trump, july 26th he
reporters to point them in the right direction. witnessesct in the impeachment inquiry testified thatwi the allegation of ukrainian influence in the 2016 election was appropriate to examine. ambassador volker testified that hed thought it was fine to investigate allegations about 2016 influence. ambassador taylor said for example that the allegations surprised and disappointed him. on thisd record i do not belie that one could conclude that president trump had no legitimate basis to raise a concern about efforts by ukrainians to influence the 2016 election. let me now turn to the first assertion that president trumps withheld aio meeting with president zelensky as a way of pressuring him to investigate the h former vice president. here it is important to note