Todays proceedings. I would like to recap my recognition of the timeline in which these events played out. I testified about all of this at length in my deposition. In july, i became aware of a hold being an obligation of the State Departments Foreign Military financing and dods usai funds. In a series of interagency meetings, i heard that the president had directed the office of of management and budget to hold the funds becausf his concerns about corruption in ukraine. Let me say at the outset that i have never discussed this or any other matter with the president and never heard directly from him about this matter. At a senior level meeting i attended on july 26, chaired by National Security council leadership, as at all other interagency meetings on this topic of which i was aware, the National Security community
expressed unanimous support for resuming the funding as in the u. S. National security interest. At the july 26 meeting, there was a discussion of how ukrainian anticorrup
reaches the point at which it does not have sufficient time to obligate all the funding by the end of the fiscal year, there were only two ways to discontinue obligation of usai. a presented directed rescission or dod directive reprogramming action. either of which we need to be notified to congress. i never heard that either was being pursued. second, i was in communication with the dod security assistance implementing community to try to understand exactly when they would reach the point at which they would be unable to obligate all the funds by the end of the fiscal year. i received a series of updates and in a september 5 update, i and other senior defense department leaders were informed that over 100 million could not be obligated by september 30. and third, i was advocating for a meeting of the cabinet level principles with the president to explain why the assistance should go forward.