CNN Analyst: DOD Official’s Testimony Describes a Process ‘You’d Expect to Read About in a Dictatorship’

The transcript of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper’s testimony was released today, and she too confirmed details about the hold on Ukraine aid and the concerns that officials had about the why of it all.

On CNN earlier tonight, Chris Cillizza said her testimony adds to the “rich tapestry” across the multiple testimonies given thus far.

Wolf Blitzer asked Samantha Vinograd, CNN national security analyst and former Obama administration national security official, how “unusual” the process Cooper lays out is.

Vinograd said, “This process that [she] describes and that’s been echoed in other depositions is a process that you’d expect to read about in a dictatorship where a leader rules by fiat and his national security team scrambles to find a legal justification and to sell a bill of goods to legislators and the American people about why the president has made a certain decision.”

“I was in NSC meetings for four years,” she continued. “Never have I heard a room of deputy cabinet officials struggling to find a legal justification after a president makes a decision to freeze assistance… There is a process to put a hold on security assistance. For example, if Ukraine had failed to meet anti-corruption benchmarks, there is an entire process that the Department of Defense would have gone through, they would have notified Congress. This was the opposite of that.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

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