Impeachment Hearings

[Stonyhands]

(02-03-2020, 08:18 PM)Dill Wrote: I missed this last week, Sunset.  I do want to answer it, though.

Two points:

1. Remember that the aid was for ongoing combat in Eastern Ukraine. "Pauses" in that kind of aid can cost lives.  Not to mention it is extremely unethical do do something like just to get dirt on a political opponent.

2. So far as the criminality of Trump's actions, they do not turn on whether Ukraine got the aid, but on whether Trump withheld it for private, partisan purposes which also conflicted with US policy goals in Eastern Europe. 

That means that even if Ukraine eventually gets the aid, Trump still broke the law when he held up the aid. 

Analogy: Imagine that you are in a car accident which puts you in the hospital where you can't work and your insurance doesn't cover everything. Some of your creditors demand IMMEDIATE payment, and your bank grants you a loan to cover pressing expenses.

But the officer supposed to disperse it withholds the money until you do him a very unethical "favor": he wants you to publicly lodge a false complaint about a co worker with whom he is competing for a promotion. You do not respond right away, however, and because the loan was withheld, your medical expenses were not paid in timely fashion and turned over to a collection agency, dropping your credit rating. 

When a whistleblower in the bank discovers this use of bank money for private and illegal leverage, the officer releases your money immediately, complaining loudly that the whistleblower hates him and is likely a secretary of his competitor.  If you were that bank's CEO, would your view be "Sunny got his loan, so where's the beef?"  Would you promote the unethical loan officer?  If that unethical officer wanted the name of the whistleblower, would you give it to him, or would you stay focused on the real problem--you've got an unethical loan officer in charge of bank money?  

Your analogy doesn’t work...just like the whole impeachment case. What good does it do to withhold something from somebody expecting something in return but never telling them specifically what you want. It just makes zero sense. The reality is that President Trump was having a diplomatic discussion with the leader of a country known for its corruption. Hence why the Ukrainian President’s campaign platform was fighting corruption. Nobody ever testified they heard first hand President Trump condition aide on an investigation into the Biden’s. Aid has been held up to other country’s a million other times, not to mention President Trump has done more for Ukraine in terms of our “National Security” than President Obama ever did. To impeach him on grounds that he allegedly abused his power by soliciting a foreign government to interfere in 2020 elections is completely as laughable as when Democrats repeatedly accuse Trump of asking Russians to hack Hillary’s email server when he made an obvious joke of a reference to the disappearance of 1000’s Hillary’s emails. This at the same time that the intelligence community is using paid for intelligence from a foreign source to illegally spy on members in the Trump campaign administration.

3 years of investigations and unproven conspiracy allegations from the left and this is literally the best they can come up with?

Before you spout off anything regarding John Bolton just remember the House Managers had every opportunity to go after him as a witness before they voted on this sham of an impeachment. Sure it would have gone to court but had it not gone the Democrats way and the courts ruled that President Trump and his administration have executive privilege and immunity from Congressional subpoenas there would not be a second article of impeachment. They could not risk it. Hence why they tried so hard for the Senate to do their job. Knowing full well that they could spin it to look like Republican Senators were incapable of having a “fair” trial. Had the witness vote gone the other way you still would have seen the courts get involved. At least delaying the trial long enough for Biden to get a head start over active Democrat Senators running for the Democratic ticket.

[*michaelsean*]

Well hell, what do we do after today?

[BmorePat87]

(02-05-2020, 03:04 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Well hell, what do we do after today?

Ask McConnell to give a vote to one of the hundreds of bills he is ignoring that have passed the House?

Apparently they needed a quick trial so they could get back to work, even though the Senate isn't doing a whole lot of work. 

[GMDino]

Romney to vote for impeachment on the first count.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mitt-romney-gop-trump-impeachment_n_5e38908ec5b66c4eafd892aa?w9&fbclid=IwAR0jd4rJR00ugkJAIaX5b-yp3qftbEW8VF9aCChJbVpQVCqXmYiavaoM3Ls

[BmorePat87]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/romney-impeach-trump/606127/

Romney, invoking his faith and the role it plays in his oath of office, announces that he will vote to find Donald Trump GUILTY. The bipartisan vote, which won't change the result, is going to be a blow against Trump's ego and the narrative that there was no GOP support.

He said that relying on the voters to try the president instead of doing it themselves is inconsistent to the Constitution and to the words of the founders, citing Alexander Hamilton.

"The President is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust. What he did was not perfect. No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of ones oath of office that I could imagine."

[jj22]

(02-05-2020, 03:04 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Well hell, what do we do after today?

I think it's up to the Democratic candidate to protect themselves against the attack coming from a foreign country this summer.

Because there's no doubt it's coming again. Trump like any criminal showed once if he got away with it he'd try again. Now he surely feels invincible. And the vote invalidates the constitution and changes everything we knew about this Nation.

We now live under a Dictatorship where the President is above the law and can use the power of the office for anything including doing his personal dirty work.

It's a precedent that effectively ends our Democracy........

[Dill]

(02-04-2020, 07:30 PM)Stonyhands Wrote: Your analogy doesn’t work...just like the whole impeachment case.  What good does it do to withhold something from somebody expecting something in return but never telling them specifically what you want.  It just makes zero sense.  The reality is that President Trump was having a diplomatic discussion with the leader of a country known for its corruption.  Hence why the Ukrainian President’s campaign platform was fighting corruption.  Nobody ever testified they heard first hand President Trump condition aide on an investigation into the Biden’s.  Aid has been held up to other country’s a million other times, not to mention President Trump has done more for Ukraine in terms of our “National Security” than President Obama ever did.  To impeach him on grounds that he allegedly abused his power by soliciting a foreign government to interfere in 2020 elections is completely as laughable as when Democrats repeatedly accuse Trump of asking Russians to hack Hillary’s email server when he made an obvious joke of a reference to the disappearance of 1000’s Hillary’s emails.  This at the same time that the intelligence community is using paid for intelligence from a foreign source to illegally spy on members in the Trump campaign administration.  

3 years of investigations and unproven conspiracy allegations from the left and this is literally the best they can come up with? 

Thanks for responding, Stony.  Let's see how much of the record we can agree on.

1. Trump withheld Congressionally appropriated aid from the Ukraine, without informing Congress, and the GAO has ruled the action illegal. Yes?

2. Though the US State Department has all manner of people and means to address corruption in the Ukraine, Trump went with an unofficial "Team," reporting directly to him outside official government channels, to accomplish an unofficial "anti-corruption" mission in the Ukraine, focused on the Bidens and outside official oversight. This team was led by Rudy Guiliani and included two Ukrainian born businessmen who have since been arrested for using a shell corporation to funnel foreign money to Republican candidates,  One of these corruption fighters, Lev Parnas, has begun to sing, insisting that the task of his team was to make clear to the Ukrainians they would get neither a meeting with Trump nor the official aid until they ANNOUNCED and investigation into Biden.  He has presented news media with a tape of him dining with the president and badmouthing then ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.  Yes?

3. Yovanovitch, an anti-corruption warrior with a sterling record, was fired under unclear circumstances. Trump has since disparaged her record. Yes? 

4. A week after withholding the aid, in a phone call with the president of the Ukraine, Trump reminded him of all the things the US had done for Ukraine. Zelenskyy asks for aid, especially Javelin missions. Trump responds "We need you to do us a favor though."  "Though" being a conditional qualifier. He asks about "Crowdstrike," a California business which he apparently thinks is in the Ukraine and from there made it look like poor Russia hacked the US election. Then he mentions Hunter Biden and Joe bragging about firing Shokin, the corrupt prosecutor.   He calls Yovanovitch "bad news" and says "she is going to go through some things" (a threat?).  He calls Shokin, fired under suspicion of corruption, "very good" and says it was "unfair" he was fired. Then he says he is sending Guiliani and Barr to meet with him. (Barr!?!? the US AG??!?!)   Correct so far?

5. A whistleblower reported to the IG about a rumor of Trump's abuse of power in a phone call to Zelenskyy.  The IG found the report credible. After the news broke, the aid was released. Z. was set to make Trump's desired announcement but didn't follow through once the aid came through. True?

6. The House Intel committee gets a copy of the whistleblower's report. It is discovered the transcript was placed on a highly classified server, breaking protocol.  Right?

7. Trump makes a "memorandum" transcript of the call available to Congress. Democrats immediately see the personal request to harm a political opponent. Republicans see a president fighting corruption. Agreed that this happened?

8. Hearings follow, in which Trump refuses to provide documents and blocks witnesses, claiming executive privilege. Some nevertheless come forward, corroborating the above timeline and Parnas' understanding of Team Giuliani's mission. EU Ambassador and Trump donor/supporter Sondland says he was working with Giuliani to get an ANNOUNCEMENT of an investigation, not an actual investigation from Ukraine.  Republicans call it all "hearsay" since none of the deposed witnesses claimed to have a DIRECT order from Trump to get dirt on Biden.  The intel committee requests Bolton's testimony but he requires a subpoena.  Are you with me so far?

I'd like to know we agree on this record before I address 1) the difference between holding up aid for official policy reasons and holding it up for private, corrupt goals, 2) the question of whether Trump "helped the Ukraine more than Obama," 3) why FBI surveillance of Trump campaign members dealing with Russians was not illegal (and other red herrings), and 4) Bolton's status as a witness. Seems you, like the Republican Senate, don't want his testimony to be heard here.

[BmorePat87]

McConnell refused to state whether or not he thought it was inappropriate to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival after being asked three times.

He finally said "It's time to move on. This decision has been made. As far as I am concerned it is in the rearview mirror."

[HarleyDog]

(02-04-2020, 07:30 PM)Stonyhands Wrote: Your analogy doesn’t work...just like the whole impeachment case.  What good does it do to withhold something from somebody expecting something in return but never telling them specifically what you want.  It just makes zero sense.  The reality is that President Trump was having a diplomatic discussion with the leader of a country known for its corruption.  Hence why the Ukrainian President’s campaign platform was fighting corruption.  Nobody ever testified they heard first hand President Trump condition aide on an investigation into the Biden’s.  Aid has been held up to other country’s a million other times, not to mention President Trump has done more for Ukraine in terms of our “National Security” than President Obama ever did.  To impeach him on grounds that he allegedly abused his power by soliciting a foreign government to interfere in 2020 elections is completely as laughable as when Democrats repeatedly accuse Trump of asking Russians to hack Hillary’s email server when he made an obvious joke of a reference to the disappearance of 1000’s Hillary’s emails.  This at the same time that the intelligence community is using paid for intelligence from a foreign source to illegally spy on members in the Trump campaign administration.  

3 years of investigations and unproven conspiracy allegations from the left and this is literally the best they can come up with?  

Before you spout off anything regarding John Bolton just remember the House Managers had every opportunity to go after him as a witness before they voted on this sham of an impeachment.  Sure it would have gone to court but had it not gone the Democrats way and the courts ruled that President Trump and his administration have executive privilege and immunity from Congressional subpoenas there would not be a second article of impeachment.  They could not risk it.  Hence why they tried so hard for the Senate to do their job.  Knowing full well that they could spin it to look like Republican Senators were incapable of having a “fair” trial.  Had the witness vote gone the other way you still would have seen the courts get involved.  At least delaying the trial long enough for Biden to get a head start over active Democrat Senators running for the Democratic ticket.

The left will not stop here. But after this, everything they keep bringing fourth is going to be discredited as obsession and hate and most will not give it any weight.

(02-05-2020, 03:04 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Well hell, what do we do after today?

Drink!

[Belsnickel]

I didn't realize that Romney's votes were the first time a Senator has voted to convict a POTUS from their own party. Goes to show how the process has always been a partisan one.

[GMDino]

(02-05-2020, 10:40 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I didn't realize that Romney's votes were the first time a Senator has voted to convict a POTUS from their own party. Goes to show how the process has always been a partisan one.

And given the reaction to it by republicans it makes all the "outrage" over the possibility that Trump would seek revenge (heads on a pike) a bit odd.

[GMDino]

Yeah...I can see why those republican senators were aghast at the thought that they were afraid of Trump threatening them...lol.

pic.twitter.com/FIg1SYtJcy

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020

 

[Dill]

(02-05-2020, 09:07 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: The left will not stop here. But after this, everything they keep bringing fourth is going to be discredited as obsession and hate and most will not give it any weight.

???  Is most of the country "the Left"?

The majority of Americans still think the president should have been impeached and removed for WHAT HE DID, not because of "hate."

What has happened is that Trump has now, twice, gotten away with crimes following an investigation because of his control of the Republican party, and their control of the AG and Senate.

I predict that Trump will not stop committing such crimes, now that he feels "unleashed."   He will commit more crimes. They will become public and generate investigations. Republicans will call the investigations a hate-driven hoax.

As rule of law breakds down, the attack begins on the one Republican Senator who stood for principle, who put doing the right thing above party.

Principle must be purged from the GOP now.  

[fredtoast]

(02-05-2020, 09:07 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: The left will not stop here. But after this, everything they keep bringing fourth is going to be discredited as obsession and hate and most will not give it any weight.

The only "most" who won't give it any weight are the ones who live in the right wing echo chamber.

You need to stop acting like you take a "balanced" look at the news when it is clear that you just parrot the speaking points from the right.  Public opinion polls generally show that more people think Trump was guilty than innocent.

[HarleyDog]

(02-06-2020, 02:39 PM)fredtoast Wrote: The only "most" who won't give it any weight are the ones who live in the right wing echo chamber.

You need to stop acting like you take a "balanced" look at the news when it is clear that you just parrot the speaking points from the right.  Public opinion polls generally show that more people think Trump was guilty than innocent.

I think your water broke.

[fredtoast]

(02-06-2020, 03:20 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: I think your water broke.

Thanks for proving my point. That childish personal insult is exactly how the right wing media trains its minions to respond when they can't argue the facts.

[Dill]

(02-06-2020, 03:20 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: I think your water broke.

Harley, one way to take down "the left" and diminish their influence here and elsewhere in the US would be to address their arguments in kind.

I am looking for some one of our Trump supporters to explain to me why "hate" is a suitable explanation for investigations into Trump for actions which would trigger a legal response to anyone perpetrating them. 

When people like Rod Blogoyevich or Paul Manafort are indicted for crimes, no one claims the legal pressure on them is simply the result of "hate." The reference is always to their actions.

Thus, the House cannot send articles of Impeachment to the Senate based upon "hate."  They cannot offer testimony of how much they hate Trump and have always hated him so just want to undo his elecion.

There must be some reference to identifiable actions which violate specifiable laws.  If the president were not presenting the House with such actions and violations, they would be unable to move on impeachment.  E.g., suppose Trump had never conditioned aid on an announcement of a Biden investigation during a phone call and illegally withheld it, or suppose he had never ordered a subordinate to falsify records?  There would be nothing to act on, right?

It seems odd that you and others would expect our government to ignore such violations--especially in the man charged to enforce the law from the highest level.   Right now it looks like the "hate" charge, followed by dismissal of any substantial engagement with the charges against Trump, is just a way of ignoring what Trump actually does. It is to ignore rule of law with respect to one's party and to place one's favored candidate above the law.     

[GMDino]

All perfectly normal.

https://news.yahoo.com/treasury-department-sent-information-on-hunter-biden-to-expanding-gop-senate-inquiry-161846826.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw

Quote:The Treasury Department has complied with Republican senators’ requests for highly sensitive and closely held financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates and has turned over “‘evidence’ of questionable origin” to them, according to a leading Democrat on one of the committees conducting the investigation.


For months, while the impeachment controversy raged, powerful committee chairmen in the Republican-controlled Senate have been quietly but openly pursuing an inquiry into Hunter Biden’s business affairs and Ukrainian officials’ alleged interventions in the 2016 election, the same matters that President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani unsuccessfully tried to coerce Ukraine’s government to investigate. 

Unlike Trump and Giuliani, however, Sens. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee; Ron Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; and Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have focused their efforts in Washington, seeking to extract politically useful information from agencies of the U.S. government. They’ve issued letters requesting records from Cabinet departments and agencies, including the State Department, the Treasury, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Archives and the Secret Service. 

Grassley and Johnson have sought to obtain some of the most sensitive and closely held documents in all of federal law enforcement — highly confidential suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by financial institutions with FinCEN, an agency of the Treasury that helps to police money laundering. 

The senators’ requests to the Treasury have borne fruit, according to the ranking Democratic senator on the Finance Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon, who contrasted the cooperation given to the Republican senators with the pervasive White House-directed stonewall that House Democrats encountered when they subpoenaed documents and witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.

“Applying a blatant double standard, Trump administration agencies like the Treasury Department are rapidly complying with Senate Republican requests — no subpoenas necessary — and producing ‘evidence’ of questionable origin,” Wyden spokesperson Ashley Schapitl said in a statement. “The administration told House Democrats to go pound sand when their oversight authority was mandatory while voluntarily cooperating with the Senate Republicans’ sideshow at lightning speed.”

The “rapid” production of sensitive financial information from the Treasury Department in response to congressional requests is apparently uncommon. A source familiar with the matter said the Treasury began turning over materials less than two months after Grassley and Johnson wrote to FinCEN on Nov. 15, 2019, requesting any SARs and related documents filed by financial institutions regarding Hunter Biden, his associates, their businesses and clients. 

Just a couple of weeks later, Wyden and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, complained to FinCEN in a letter that “information requests from Congress, including legitimate Committee oversight requests related to Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), often take months to process, and we understand that certain such requests have yet to be answered at all.”

“Sen. Wyden’s warning was spurred by concern that the agency would prioritize Republican requests over Democratic requests,” Schapitl said of the December letter to FinCEN. “Treasury’s subsequent actions have made his concerns even more urgent.”

With the Senate impeachment trial concluded and the Democratic primaries in full swing, the efforts of the Republican-led investigation may soon appear at the center of the political stage. The flow of information from the administration to Senate Republicans has prompted concerns among Democrats that any damaging information uncovered may be deployed at a time of maximum political advantage for the Trump campaign.

“Republicans are turning the Senate into an arm of the president’s political campaign, pursuing an investigation designed to further President Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and smear Vice President Biden,” Schapitl said. The Biden presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A series of letters and public statements shows that since last autumn the senators have been pursuing a wide-ranging joint inquiry into Hunter Biden’s business affairs in Ukraine at the time his father, Vice President Joe Biden, was leading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy and into the activities of Ukrainian officials and a Ukrainian-American Democratic political operative during the 2016 election. 

Aside from the statement from Wyden’s office, there has been scant information about what investigators have uncovered, if anything. Wyden’s statement stopped short of saying whether the “‘evidence’ of questionable origin” produced in compliance with the senators’ request included SARs.

The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 mandates that banks generate SARs to report to FinCEN any transactions that they know or have reason to suspect violate federal criminal laws or are connected to money laundering. SARs are among the most confidential, closely held documents in federal law enforcement. They are forbidden to be disclosed or have their existence disclosed by banks or government authorities, are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and are privileged in most cases from discovery by civil litigants.

Because SARs may be, and indeed are required to be, filed simply on the basis of a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity, the existence of a SAR doesn’t indicate that illegal activity has actually occurred. 

The Republican Senate staff conducting the investigation did not respond to inquiries, and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee declined to comment. Treasury, State and Justice did not respond to inquiries. The FBI declined to comment.

The National Archives and Records Administration said that it had not turned over any records to the Senate yet, but that a review of the request by the White House and the office of President Barack Obama, which has purview over some of the records, is ongoing. “NARA has been in regular contact with committee staff,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

The Secret Service, which only received its request from the Republican investigators after the acquittal vote of the president on Wednesday, could not be immediately reached for comment.

From their letters, it’s clear that the senators’ inquiry into the Bidens deals with the same subject matter that Trump and Giuliani’s pressure campaign sought to place under scrutiny. Their interest in suspected Ukrainian influences on the 2016 election, however, has a different point of emphasis. 

Instead of the debunked CrowdStrike conspiracy theory that Trump alluded to on his call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky or similar unsubstantiated theories positing that Ukraine was somehow behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the senators have focused on a controversial January 2017 Politico article that alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election to help Hillary Clinton defeat Trump. 

The article relied heavily on the allegations of Andrii Telizhenko, then a diplomat in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, who said he was asked by Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic Party consultant, to get dirt on Paul Manafort, who was then the campaign manager for Trump. Telizhenko has since cast himself as a central figure in Giuliani’s Ukraine investigations.

The Politico article has been seized on by Trump’s defenders as evidence that there was Ukrainian interference in the U.S. presidential election similar to the Kremlin-directed influence campaign. 

“Whether there’s a connection between Democratic operatives and Ukrainian officials during the 2016 election has yet to be determined,” Graham said in a December statement. “It will only be found by looking. We intend to look.”

National security officials who served in the Trump administration have rejected the notion that Ukrainian efforts against Trump were coordinated or could be reasonably be likened to Russia’s systematic election interference campaign, which intelligence agencies have assessed was led by President Vladimir Putin himself.

“It is a fiction that the Ukrainian government was launching an effort to upend our election, upend our election to mess with our Democratic systems,” Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official in Trump’s White House, testified at her House deposition in October.  

Yet throughout the fall and early winter, Republican senators peppered executive branch officials with request letters on both the Bidens and the Ukraine interference theory that Hill had implored Congress to avoid. 

Grassley and Johnson courted controversy with a letter to the Justice Department seeking to obtain a broad swath of information that Chalupa, the Democratic Party consultant, says she voluntarily provided to the FBI in 2016 when she felt harassed by Russian hacking.

In a January response letter to the Justice Department, Wyden called the request “outrageous.”

“To use [Chalupa’s] voluntary cooperation in order to weaponize her personal information against her in furtherance of a political attack based on unsupported claims and potential Russian propaganda would compromise public trust in our law enforcement, undermine Americans’ rights, and damage our national security interests,” he wrote. 

[HarleyDog]

(02-06-2020, 04:05 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Thanks for proving my point. That childish personal insult is exactly how the right wing media trains its minions to respond when they can't argue the facts.

Ease up Fred. It was not an insult. It was a response to your status in your profile. Your mood is: Pregnant. Don't be so uptight.

[GMDino]

https://thehill.com/policy/international/foreign-aid/481871-trump-administration-delaying-arms-transfers-worth-30m-to

Quote:Trump administration delaying arms transfers worth $30M to Ukraine: report


At least six commercial sales of guns and ammunition have faced delays of at least a year and continue to remain frozen, three current Ukrainian officials and one former senior U.S. official told BuzzFeed News. Now, Ukraine is requesting its money back.

The export license for the “most critical” of the pending sales was submitted in November 2018 for $10 million in ammunition, two Ukrainian officials told the news outlet. The five other sales, which include products like lethal weapons and amount to about $20 million, were prepaid between January and March 2019.


The officials have said the Trump administration has not provided any reasoning about why the commercial orders are being delayed. U.S. sales between companies and foreign buyers need licensing approved by the State Department, which typically takes about two months, according to BuzzFeed News. 

“It might be wise for the Ukrainians to look for other sources,” the U.S. official told BuzzFeed News, saying White House and State Department officials have told him the sales are still being “evaluated” even though Ukraine has already made payments on them. 

The report comes on the heels of the president’s acquittal in an impeachment trial in the Senate Wednesday. The charges in that case revolved around a controversy involving the withholding of military aid to Ukraine. The impeachment inquiry investigated whether Trump tied his requests for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden to $391 million in military aid to the country that was held up.  

It is unclear whether the sales delays are related to the push for investigations into Biden and his son, as the approvals have been withheld since before the scrutinized July 25 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president.

The officials speculated about a number of theories on why the deal was taking so long, including the delay being related to a military procurement scandal involving Ukraine’s former president or a Chinese attempt to buy a Ukrainian strategic aerospace company. 

The State Department, U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and the White House did not immediately return requests for comment.

The U.S. has provided Ukraine with $1.6 billion in assistance since its war with Russia began in 2014.