Page 36 - Combating Corruption News Today

Certifying, and you said this in your opening statement. the government of ukraine has taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption, increasing accountability and sustaining improvements of combat capability enabled by u.s. assistance. so by the time president trump froze the aid, the department of defense had spent weeks, if not months, determining that the ukrainian government met every requirement in the law and made significant str...

The hold on the aid in july, it appears. but back in may, miss cooper, i believe you said that there was aid that was conditioned, but you certified in may that the conditions had been met, and they included progress on command and control reform, commitment to pursue defense industry reform and pass laws to enable government-to-government procurement. is that correct? >> yes, maam, thats correct. >> when you find out in july that theyre concerned about corruption, youre scratching your head, ri...

Statement about the investigations, the aid would be lifted. you covered that with the chairman. press conference of november 17th when mick mulvaney let the cat fully out of the bag. he revealed that president trump talked to him about, and i quote mick mulvaney here, the corruption related to the dnc server and admitted that, quote, thats why we held up the money. any other explanation for the hold is a farce. now in my remaining 30 seconds, so people understand what i referred to, in the 1970...

Reason why that hold was on? did you ever get a reason? >> no, maam. the only thing that i heard about it, but this is, again, you know, second, third hand, was that the president was concerned about corruption. but that was all i ever heard. >> so, would you -- were you ever provided any additional information about the reason for the hold? >> no, maam. >> colleagues in the minority asked mr. hale, isnt it common to have holds on military aid? i think you said theyre not unusual. would you agre...

>> thank you. i appreciate that. mr. volker, i want to tell you i really enjoyed your opening testimony today taking us through that. i appreciate it. you talk about letters signed and sharing concerns about leadership in your assigned country, about agreeing with and sometimes disagreeing with the leadership of your own country when you felt it was appropriate. youre the boots on the ground for the administration. lets face it, youre part of that team whos the there to serve the country in that...

With george kent or phil or not. but its something wed discussed as part of our meetings in kiev at that time. >> i yield to the chairman. >> when you had this conversation and you urged ukrainians not to investigate or prosecute the former presidents, their response was oh, you mean youre asking us to investigate the clintons and bidens, that was their response? >> thats what i recall from seeing ambassador taylors testimony. >> you didnt understand that at the time but at the time had you read...

Of mr. zelensky, end quote. again there were no demands from your perspective, mr. morrison. >> that is correct, sir. >> speculation of the whistle blow aside and motivations the fact is the whistle-blower was wrong about many of the facts as well, correct? >> sir, im not intimately familiar with the whistle-blower complaint, but i did not hear a demand in that call. >> i yield back. >> the gentlemans time has expired. mr. heck. >> thank you, chairman. ambassador volker, i want to thank you for ...

Unifying ukraine. >> in all this time -- mr. giuliani in this time in may and september he mentioned biden in the investigation in relation to ukraine. none of that stirred youre curiosity? you just now finally come to this point? >> as i testified i met with mr. giuliani once and he did bring up mr. biden and i pushed back on that. and i maintained a clear distinction ukraine investigating its own citizens and corruption is fine. to go beyond that and say were going to investigate the vice pres...

Sir, is it not true in march this year the department of defense certified ukraine as having made sufficient progress to continue to receive military assistance? >> i dont know the details of that i but i believe that to be correct. >> is it not true that president zelensky with an overwhelming mandate based largely on his effort and advocacy for anti-corruption. >> that is correct. >> is it not true when his party won one party control. >> that is correct. >> he enacted sweeping reforms to comb...

Be prosecuting the former president. and i had met with the former president and met with others in the opposition as well. i wanted to call mr. yermacs attention to the possible problems with this. these have created deep divisions in society. so i cited president zelenskys inauguration speech -- im sorry, his national day speech from august 24th that was all ability uniu.n.ifying the country. and i cautioned mr. yermac to say pursuing prosecution of the former president risks deepening the cor...