‘Concluded with President Zelensky agreeing’: Trump released aid after securing Ukraine investigation pledge, diplomat says
(Worthy News) – President Trump lifted a hold on security assistance for Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky promised to announce investigations into the 2016 presidential election and former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a U.S. diplomat.
William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, described that sequence of events in his opening statement in the Democrat-led House impeachment inquiry. He rooted that account in his conversations with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Taylor’s testimony echoed allegations that Trump tried to use security assistance as leverage to press Zelensky to open the politically explosive investigations. But it also suggests that Zelensky had agreed to acquiesce to Trump’s demands only to have the deal killed by Taylor himself.
“President Trump was adamant that President Zelensky, himself, had to ‘clear things up and do it in public,’” Taylor said in a prepared statement during his closed-door deposition, paraphrasing Sondland’s Sept. 8 account of a conversation with the president. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]