Jake Tapper Confronts GOP Sen.: Does Mulvaney’s Reported Role in Holding Up Ukraine Aid Concern You at All?

CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted Senator Ron Johnson this morning on Ukraine as he defended President Donald Trump and said he has legitimate concerns about corruption in Ukraine.

Johnson said that after he found out about the withholding of military aid, it was ultimately released “largely due to a lot of pressure put on by people like me and Senator Portman and Senator Durbin and other people.”

“Also the whistleblower complaint,” Tapper remarked.

Johnson said he’s sympathetic with Trump’s “legitimate concerns” about corruption, saying POTUS has been “very consistent” in his conversations about that.

“He spoke with President Zelensky on July 25th,” Tapper said, “the president in all his opposition to corruption only brought up two items. One of them had to do with Crowdstrike and this conspiracy theory that the Ukrainians actually hacked the DNC, and the other one had to do with Joe and Hunter Biden who he named in particular. And that’s why a lot of the people who have testified as we learned this week — and these are not anti-Trumpers… They have testified that they came to see that when people talked about corruption, they meant Biden.”

Johnson said that’s just “their impression,” telling Tapper, “I’ve never heard the president say I want to dig up dirt on a potential 2020 opponent. What I’ve always heard the president consistently concerned about is what happened in 2016. ‘How did this false narrative of Russian collusion with my campaign occur? Why was I strapped with the special counsel?'”

Tapper brought up the investigations currently going on in the U.S. into the origins of the Russia investigation. Johnson said there’s “a lot of smoke” and unanswered questions out there about what happened in 2016, but Tapper responded, “That’s not what President Trump is pushing for when he talks about this DNC Crowdstrike conspiracy.”

He brought up how Tom Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security advisor, recently said this was a “completely debunked” conspiracy theory with absolutely no validity.

Johnson brought up the withheld military aid and said it could have been held up because Mick Mulvaney and others are fiscal conservatives who may have asked “why are we spending this three weeks left in the fiscal year.”

“NSC officials testified that this isn’t about being a fiscal conservative for Mulvaney,” Tapper responded. “Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Vindman said Sondland said that this agreement — you have announce these public investigations into the Bidens — was being coordinated by Mick Mulvaney. Does it not concern you that the White House Chief of Staff reportedly supported this, what is clearly a ‘you have to do this if you want the money’?”

“Literally Ukrainians desperately needed this military aid and were dying — were dying, literally being killed — between the time that the money was held up in July and when it was released in September. So this isn’t just about political games and throwing out names and Alexandra Chalupa, this is about people desperately needing military aid and getting it,” he continued.

“I would take things that Col. Vindman says with a grain of salt because in his testimony he said the Obama Administration provided javelin weapons, they didn’t. It was March 2018 that 210 javelin weapons were finally approved in terms of movement over to Ukraine,” Johnson said in response.

Tapper asked, “It doesn’t concern you that Mulvaney is bringing up this quid pro quo?”

“Why weren’t the Ukrainians asking me about where is all of the support?” Johnson countered.

You can watch above, via CNN.