Ukraine aid was tied to probe, says Morrison

Bloomberg

A former top White House adviser told House impeachment investigators Ukrainians were advised that US military aid was being withheld until their president announced an investigation of a company that had hired ex-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Tim Morrison, a former senior director of European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, said Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the EU, told him how he had informed a high-ranking Ukrainian official that release of $400 million in aid was being linked to the investigations, according to a transcript of his closed-door testimony.
The House committee also released testimony from Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, who said she found some of discussion on the July 25 call between the two leaders to be “unusual and inappropriate.”
Morrison also said Sondland later claimed such a statement from Ukraine’s prosecutor general wouldn’t do, because President Donald Trump had told him “there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelenskiy had to do it and he should want to do it.”
Morrison said in closed-door testimony that he was among officials who listened-in on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine president Volodomyr Zelenskiy, which has become the subject of the impeachment inquiry. He testified that it raised some concerns, but that he heard nothing illegal discussed — and that a rough transcript of the call later released by the White House was “accurate and complete.”
That contradicts testimony from at least one other witness, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, who has testified he also listened in on that call and that the memo summary left out some phrases, edits he tried to put back in — including a mention, by name, of Burisma, the energy company on whose board Biden’s son Hunter Biden served.
Morrison said he was not “comfortable with the idea of Zelenskiy being involved in US politics and relayed his concerns to then National Security Advisor John Bolton. He advised Morrison to “Stay out of it; brief the lawyers,” according to Morrison.