Trump administration knew in May Zelensky felt pressured to investigate Bidens
Source: CNN
Washington (CNN)US administration officials knew as early as May 2019 that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky felt pressure from President Donald Trump's allies to conduct investigations that were politically useful to the American president. That's according to former Trump White House official Fiona Hill, who in recent testimony before Congress said she was told of that pressure contemporaneously by an American businessman and former Obama administration official who had met Zelensky's team on May 7.
This account undercuts the argument from the President and his allies that the Ukrainians did not feel pressure to conduct investigations into Trump's political opponents, including 2020 presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden in Ukraine. Hill, who until last month was a top deputy at the National Security Council inside the White House, testified that she heard from one of the participants in that May 7 meeting, former State Department official Amos Hochstein.
According to Hill, Hochstein told her on May 22 that the Ukrainians were concerned about the pressure that then President-elect Zelensky was already facing from Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. She also testified that in mid-May she mentioned these concerns to her boss, then-national security adviser John Bolton, as well as to Bill Taylor, the former Ukraine ambassador who in June became the top US diplomat in Ukraine as head of mission in Kiev.
Hill testified that by mid-May she had also heard similar concerns about Giuliani's pressure campaign from US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Phil Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs. Hill's account illustrates that US officials were aware Ukrainians felt they were being leaned on to investigate Trump's political rivals long before the July 25 phone call between the two countries' presidents.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/18/politics/ukraine-zelensky-pressure-trump-investigations/index.html
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RESPECT
ago.
Glad this is finally getting the attention it deserves.
