Posted by on December 20, 2019 4:21 am
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Categories: µ Newsjones

Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was scheduled to visit Ukraine in November following his trip to Germany to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall falling. But President Donald Trump, in coordination with the State Department, cut the Kyiv trip from Pompeo’s schedule at the last minute amid the ongoing impeachment process, according to a U.S. official and two other individuals familiar with the matter.

In the lead-up to the trip, the State Department had solidified most of the details of the travel to Ukraine, but in the final stages of planning the secretary’s office notified officials and staffers inside the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv that the visit would not go forward. Trump had pulled the plug, according to those same sources, in part because the White House did not want administration officials landing in Ukraine during the impeachment investigation. 

Pompeo also wanted to refrain from visiting the embassy in Kyiv because the top diplomat there, Bill Taylor, had told impeachment investigators that Rudy Giuliani pushed Ukraine to “intervene in domestic policy,” two individuals with knowledge of the State Department’s thinking said. Taylor also said he was aware that the delivery of U.S. military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration launching investigations sought by the White House. His deposition transcript was released the day Pompeo landed in Germany.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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