GOP Sen. Ron Johnson Details Talks With Trump on Ukraine Aid in Letter to Top House Republicans

Top congressional Republicans Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan “reluctantly” wrote Senator Ron Johnson asking him for any firsthand knowledge he has on President Donald Trump’s actions with respect to Ukraine.

Johnson responded in a letter made public this afternoon detailing his conversations with U.S. officials and the president directly.

Johnson attended a country briefing with the rest of the inaugural delegation to speak with the incoming Zelensky administration, and he raises a question of whether Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — set to testify publicly this week about the concerns he had — was trying to undermine POTUS:

He stated that it was the position of the NSC that our relationship with Ukraine should be kept separate from our geopolitical competition with Russia. My blunt response was, ‘How in the world is that even possible?’

I do not know if Vindman accurately stated the NSC’s position, whether President Trump shared that viewpoint, or whether Vindman was really just expressing his own view. I raise this point because I believe that a significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their “turf.” They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits this profile.

In August, Johnson writes, he spoke with Gordon Sondland and the call apparently “involved Sondland describing an arrangement where, if Ukraine did something to demonstrate its serious intention to fight corruption and possibly help determine what involvement operatives in Ukraine might have had during the 2016 U.S> presidential campaign, then Trump would release the hold on military support.”

Johnson says he was concerned at the time and spoke with Trump a few days later to “try to persuade him to authorize me to tell Zelensky that the hole would be lifted on military aid.”

He writes Trump wasn’t ready to do that because “he reminded me how thoroughly corrupt Ukraine was and again conveyed his frustration that Europe doesn’t do its fair share of providing military aid.”

Johnson recalls the president mimicking the kind of conversation he would have with Angela Merkel and saying, “Ron, I walk to Angela and ask her, ‘Why don’t you fund these things,’ and she tells me, ‘Because we know you will.’ We’re schmucks, Ron. We’re schmucks.”

When Johnson asked whether “there was some kind of arrangement where Ukraine would take some action and the hold would be lifted,” Johnson writes Trump immediately denied it “without hesitation” and asked who told him that. Johnson says he told Trump it was Sondland, and that POTUS responded, “Who is that guy?”

“I interpreted that not as a literal question — the president did know whom Sondland was — but rather as a sign that the president did not know him well,” Johnson adds.

You can read his full letter here.

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