Mulvaney insists no quid pro quo with Ukraine after WH comments
Mulvaney Acting White House Chief of Staff insists he did not admit to wrongdoing by President Trump after comments he made during a marathon press briefing Thursday were interpreted as evidence of a quid pro quo linking military aid to Ukraine with an investigation of potential Ukrainian involvement with Democrats during the 2016 election.
Democrats have accused Trump of temporarily delaying $391 million in aid in order to leverage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping the probe. Mulvaney seemed to indicate that the two were connected, but now he claims it was a misunderstanding.
“That’s what people are saying that I said, but I didn’t say that,” Mulvaney claimed on “Fox News Sunday,” insisting that his words were taken the wrong way. Mulvaney acknowledged that President Trump had mentioned concern regarding Ukraine and the Democratic National Committee’s hacked server, “but it wasn’t connected to the aid.”
The confusion over whether or not Mulvaney had admitted to a quid pro quo stemmed from an exchange with ABC News reporter Jon Karl. Karl asked if the investigation of Ukraine’s possible ties to Democrats during the 2016 election was connected to the withholding of the money, stating that this would be a quid pro quo.
“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” Mulvaney said. He later issued a statement saying that “there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”
The investigation request was part of a phone call between the two world leaders, but both Trump and Zelensky have insisted there was no pressure involved. The call was the basis for an anonymous whistleblower complaint that has become the basis for an impeachment investigation that has included several closed-door interviews with officials related to U.S.-Ukraine relations. The complaint also alleged that Trump wanted Ukraine to help Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Sunday morning, Mulvaney claimed that the best proof that there was no quid pro quo is the fact that the Trump administration ended up turning over the money.
Source – https://www.foxnews.com/politics