House staffers on a summer trip to Ukraine learned U.S. aid was frozen. Stunned, here's what they di

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-staffers-summer-trip-ukraine-learned-u-s-aid-was-n1084741?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

House staffers on a summer trip to Ukraine learned U.S. aid was frozen. Stunned, here's what they did next.
The untold story of how two congressional aides who track federal spending got wind something was wrong and touched off a scramble to find the truth.

Nov. 18, 2019, 10:38 AM EST / Updated Nov. 18, 2019, 10:41 AM EST

By Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON — Two days after a whistleblower secretly filed a complaint about President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine in August, two top congressional staffers arrived in Kyiv on a routine business trip that ended up setting off alarm bells on Capitol Hill.

The aides work for the Democratic leadership of the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for federal spending. They had been dispatched to make an on-the-ground assessment of the cash Congress has been pumping into former Soviet states — including Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine — to aid their defenses against Russian aggression.

But after traveling from Chisinau, Moldova, for two days of meetings and Ukrainian special-forces training observation in Kyiv and Berdychiv starting on Aug. 14, the staffers were shocked to learn from U.S. embassy officials that there was no new money coming into Ukraine, a congressional aide familiar with their trip told NBC News. The Trump administration had frozen military aid to the country in the midst of its war with Russia.

What's more, the two Appropriations staffers, Becky Leggieri and Hayden Milberg, couldn't even get an explanation for the hold-up, because embassy officials didn't know the reason, the aide said. That set off a scramble in Washington to find out what happened to the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that had been specifically earmarked by Congress for Ukraine and which now play a pivotal role in a mushrooming scandal that threatens to lead to the president's impeachment.

The anonymous whistleblower, a CIA employee, has received a great deal of attention for exposing what Democrats say was Trump’s plot to pressure Ukraine to help him politically in exchange for receiving military aid. But even if the whistleblower had not stepped forward, there's a chance that the scheme would eventually have been exposed by a combination of congressional accountants like Leggieri and Milberg, whose job it is to keep track of every major expenditure, and various executive branch officials who have emerged to share the pieces of the story they knew.

The appropriations staffers didn't know about the Biden plot, only that military aid was being held up. The whistleblower sewed it all together — and did that in time to prevent a deal from being consummated or a freeze on the funds becoming permanent. But when the staffers realized the money was not flowing, they set off important alarm bells.

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[blm]

1. Geez

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. This article does a nice job of explaining how the funding process is supposed to be managed,

and exactly what Trump wanted Zelensky to do:

If Zelenskiy wanted the money, he had to publicly announce the opening of investigations that would cast aspersions both on Biden and on the U.S. intelligence community's finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win, the officials have said under oath. The latter would require Ukraine's president to fictitiously implicate his own nation and exonerate its mortal enemy in service of Trump.

And there's the bribe, neatly summed up: If you do these things I'll give you the money. The fact that the transaction was thwarted at the last minute doesn't make it any less of a bribe.

[Nevilledog]

6. +100000

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. adhering, aid and comfort, to an enemy equals treason

[crickets]

9. Yes it does. nt

[BSdetect]

3. An actual traitor is running this country so when can we arrest him?

[Hekate]

4. KnR

[wiggs]

5. I take exception to the phrase '...what the democrats say was Trump's plot to pressure Ukraine...'

Media loves to make this a horserace, a conflict between the parties. But at this point if you're a journalist you can say that it APPEARS TO BE A PLOT. You have texts, evidence, testimony. It is not a democratic claim.

The anonymous whistleblower, a CIA employee, has received a great deal of attention for exposing what Democrats say was Trump’s plot to pressure Ukraine to help him politically in exchange for receiving military aid.

[lastlib]

10. You are exactly right!!

It isn't just "Democrats" saying it--it's also non-partisan career professional government officials. And anyobody with alpha waves above the level of a cabbage can see what's going on and deduce that a plot exists.

[yonder]

11. +1.

[usaf-vet]

12. What I don't understand is it should be very clear to journalist that if Trump and his cabal....

.... take further control of our Constitutional/democratic safeguards "THE FREE PRESS" journalist may find themself out of work as the Trump/Putin's plan would be to eliminate any and all free press and replace it with government-controlled media.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/24/putin-russia-media-state-government-control

Why do they want to play this as a horse race? That only makes it that much easier for the consolidation of independent media into a state-controlled media. State-controlled media would only report what the state wants you to hear.

[dem in texas]

7. Read that Funding was approved by congress the first of Feb. 2019

Was supposed to be released by the end of February. Why wasn't it know earlier than July that the funding was being withheld?

[intrepidity]

14. Good question

Also, when the two staffers learned from the Embassy that the funds were frozen, how is it possible that the Ukrainians themselves did not also know? One talking point is no harm since they didn't even know.

[struggle4progress]

13. "Since I was unable to hand Ukraine over to the Russians, I gave them Syria instead!"

[intrepidity]

15. One hugely massively important detail is missing!

On Sept 11th, when the funds were released, Zelenskyy was scheduled to appear on CNN on the 13th (Fareed's show) and would have announced the beginning of the Trump-desired quo--I mean--"investigations". Too bad for Trump that Zelensky cancelled the interview once the funds were released, sucker!