Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko said Thursday that U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland had “never” linked U.S. aid to Ukrainian investigations of the 2016 elections or the Biden’s role in stopping a probe of Burisma.
Prystaiko spoke the day after the first public hearings in the House Intelligence Committee as part of the “impeachment inquiry,” where two witnesses said they came to believe there had been such a link — though only some time after Politico reported on August 28 that aid had been held up by the Trump administration.
One of the witnesses, Chargé d’affaires Bill Taylor, introduced new evidence that a staffer told him recently that he overheard Sondland speaking to President Donald Trump the day after his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, discussing “investigations.” The staffer also told Taylor that Sondland said that Trump was more interested in investigations than anything else.
As Breitbart News’ Kristina Wong noted, that new evidence — which is fourth-hand hearsay, plus opinion — added little new information, but was cited by Democrats and journalists as evidence that aid might have been linked to investigations Trump had asked the new Ukrainian government to pursue.
Pentagon Official Is Out After He Told James O’Keefe on Undercover ‘Gay Date’ He Planned to Subvert Trump’s Policies
World’s Dumbest Rapper Arrested for Fraud, But Satanic Discovery and Live ‘Sacrifice’ Found at Home Are Far Worse
Trump admin targets woke schools accused of hiding students’ gender transitions from parents
Exposed Fauci diary shows he estimated COVID-19 death rate to be much lower than what he told Congress
Nancy Guthrie update: 25 weeks after abduction, Elizabeth Smart says there’s ‘reason to have hope’
NBA star rips socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani as ‘mayor playing president’ and more top headlines
Rep Thomas Massie says the Iran war has ‘significantly weakened’ America ‘all for Israel’
How the Big Beautiful Bill became law: Late-night drama in the Senate
Missouri congressional candidate accused of funneling $165,000 from terminated state campaign
Multiple people wounded in mass shooting at Seattle Center, police say
Newborn vanished after secret birth, parents allegedly claimed baby ‘was a prank’: cops
NY circus performer airlifted to hospital after colleague’s arrow misses target, strikes his neck
Nevada man dies at famed Sequoia National Park trail after sudden emergency
Inside Fauci’s private diary: What he wrote about Trump, TV personalities and celebrities
ICE prepares major operation targeting Haitians losing TPS after Supreme Court ruling
On Thursday, Prystaiko said that there had been no link in discussions at the time with Sondland, as Reuters reported:
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said on Thursday that U.S. ambassador Gordon Sondland did not explicitly link military aid to Kiev with opening an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Interfax Ukraine reported.
…
“Ambassador Sondland did not tell us, and certainly did not tell me, about a connection between the assistance and the investigations. You should ask him,” Prystaiko said about Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
…
“I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and security assistance,” Prystaiko was quoted as saying by Interfax. “Yes, the investigations were mentioned, you know, in the conversation of the presidents. But there was no clear connection between these events.”
Pentagon Official Is Out After He Told James O’Keefe on Undercover ‘Gay Date’ He Planned to Subvert Trump’s Policies
World’s Dumbest Rapper Arrested for Fraud, But Satanic Discovery and Live ‘Sacrifice’ Found at Home Are Far Worse
Trump admin targets woke schools accused of hiding students’ gender transitions from parents
Exposed Fauci diary shows he estimated COVID-19 death rate to be much lower than what he told Congress
Nancy Guthrie update: 25 weeks after abduction, Elizabeth Smart says there’s ‘reason to have hope’
NBA star rips socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani as ‘mayor playing president’ and more top headlines
Rep Thomas Massie says the Iran war has ‘significantly weakened’ America ‘all for Israel’
How the Big Beautiful Bill became law: Late-night drama in the Senate
Missouri congressional candidate accused of funneling $165,000 from terminated state campaign
Multiple people wounded in mass shooting at Seattle Center, police say
Newborn vanished after secret birth, parents allegedly claimed baby ‘was a prank’: cops
NY circus performer airlifted to hospital after colleague’s arrow misses target, strikes his neck
Nevada man dies at famed Sequoia National Park trail after sudden emergency
Inside Fauci’s private diary: What he wrote about Trump, TV personalities and celebrities
ICE prepares major operation targeting Haitians losing TPS after Supreme Court ruling
In his closed-door testimony last month, which was released by the House Intelligence Committee several days ago, Sondland told the committee that he had spoken frequently with Prystaiko and other Ukrainian officials during the period in question.
Sondland is due to testify in the public hearings next week.
Story cited here.
