Page 5 - Combatting Corruption News Today

Ukraine as having been sufficient -- and made sufficient progress to continue to receive military assistance? >> i dont know the details of that, but i believe that to be correct. >> president zelensky based largely on his effort and advocacy for anticorruption. >> that is correct. >> is it not true that it was expanded on july 21st when his party won one party control. >> that is correct. >> in fact, subsequently he enacted sweeping reforms to combat anticorruption, did he not? >> yes, he has. ...

You that i appreciate your opening statement and you talk about letters signed and sharing leadership in your assigned country and 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 that is there to serve the country and in that way, and that all to me sound like the works of a very good diplomat and i want to thank you for that. >> thank you,...

>> thank you, mr. chairman. im delight to follow mr. ratcliffe because he just perfectly summarized the defense my republican colleagues are mounting of this behavior. the defense goes like this. the president is acting on some deep historical concern apparently invisible concern about corruption, and that because hes so concerned about corruption in ukraine hes holding up aid and being prudent and judicious. the first part of that is pretty easy to dispose of because president trump wasnt worri...

On the aid in july, it appears, back in may, miss cooper, i believe you said 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 past laws to enable government to procurement. is that correct? >> thats correct. >> then, when you find out in july theyre concerned about corruption, youre scratching your head, were you not? >> yes, maam. >> do you kno...

Illegal. miss cooper, i want you to help wang through this, since the impound act of 1974, the president has not had the authority on a whim or out of prudence or general skepticism of foreign aid to stop foreign aid. under our constitution its the congress, not the president that controls the pow over the purse, correct? >> yes, sir. >> the security assistance -- the assistance authorized to ukraine was authorized and appropriate rated by the congress, correct? >> so congress is also concerned ...

Lifted and you covered that with the chairman. you had the press conference of october 17th, when mick mulvaney let the foley out of the bag and said the president talked about, quoting the corruption related to the dnc server and admitted, quote, thats why we held up the money. any other explanation for the hold is a farce. in my remaining 30 seconds, just so people understand what i referred to. in the 1970s, richard nixon just arbitrarily decided, i dont know because he had a general skip ske...

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 strides in combatting corr...

Giuliani and this time in that may to september, he mentioned the biden investigation. he mentioned biden over 50 times and 20-something times in relation to ukraine. none of that stirred your curiosity? did you now finally come to this point? >> as i testified, i met with mr. giuliani once and he did bring up vice president biden and i pushed back on that and i maintained a very clear distinction that ukraine investigating its own citizens and corruption would be fine going beyond that to say w...

>> do you think the ukrainians have a similar understanding? >> yes, i do. there is also a perception that when ambassador yovanovitch who weve all known for 33 years of being an awesome ambassador that when she left kiev that the u.s. position on corruption would weaken. thats a narrative thats floating around. who was the person that took over for her in the interim? what was the charger. >> immediately after masha was joe pennington. >> this was individual strong or weak on corruption? >> i w...

Again, there were no demands from your perspective, mr. morrison. >> that is correct, sir. >> so -- speculations about the whistle-blower aside with regard to motivation, the whistle-blower was wrong about many of the facts as well, correct? >> im not familiar with the whistle-blower complaint, but i did not hear demand in the call. >> i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ambassador volker, i want to thank you for being here today, and i, frankly, found some of your opening statement top ge...