Donald Trump with US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland (File)

Testimony from top officials, in the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget, further link Donald Trump’s cutoff of Ukraine military aid to his demands for Kiev’s investigation of Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

In a transcript of his October 31 testimony, released on Saturday, Tim Morrison — the NSC’s top Russia and Europe advisor — said US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland met Trump about six times between July 16 and September 11.

Read Transcript of Morrison Testiomny

Other testimony has established that Sondland, a political appointee and central figure in the “irregular channel” for foreign policy set up by Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, told Ukrainian officials in a White House on July 10 that they must announce the investigation. The demand infuriated National Security Advisor John Bolton, who decried the “drug deal” and consulted staff and the NSC’s top lawyer about insulating the agency from the Trump-Giuliani effort.

Morrison’s account puts further pressure on Sondland, who testifies in the public impeachment hearings into Trump next Wednesday.

Two staff in the US Embassy in Ukraine have spoken of a July 26 phone conversation between Trump and Sondland, the day after Trump asked new Ukrsinian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the investigations to tarnish Biden and to cover up Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US elections.

David Holmes and Suriya Janati were with Sondland in a Kiev restaurant when Trump called on a mobile phone over an unsecured line. They said Trump inquired about the status of “more investigations”. Afterwards, Sondland said that “President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for”, than he did about Ukraine.

Morrison said in his October 31 closed-door testimony that Sondland’s “mandate from the president was to go make deals”.

He said he spoke to Sondland in early September after the Ambassador spoke with Andriy Yermak, a top Zelenskiy aide: “[Sondland] told me that in his — that what he communicated was that he believed the — what could help them move the aid was if the [Ukraine] prosecutor general would go to the mic and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation”.

Joe Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest private gas company. An investigation into Burisma had been closed years earlier with no finding of wrongdoing.

Giuliani, working with two now-indicted business associates, launched an effort in November 2018 for renewed investigations.

Sources said last week that Russian-born, Florida-based businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman met with Giuliani and Trump in the White House in December to discuss the arrangements.

Sondland initially testified last month, in a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee, that he had not involvement in Trump’s freezing of $391 million in military aid and a White House visit by Zelenskiy conditioned upon an announcement of the investigations.

But the Ambassador, a wealthy hotelier who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, revised his testimony to acknowledge that he knew about the link in early September.

Morrison said that he spoke to Sondland several times about the irregular channel of foreign policy: “I would offer him counsel on what others in the interagency were doing that he should factor into his instinct or his impulse, or I would tell him that I thought there was perhaps a more effective way to get it done than he was contemplating.”

Morrison said Fiona Hill, his predecessor at the NSC, advised him to “steer clear of Gordon”.

I said…the approach I would pursue was I’d rather have him inside the tent, you know, rather than outside the tent. And so I wanted to know what he was doing and do my best to spy, you know, [on] problems as opposed to being ignorant.

OMB’s Sandy: Aid Freeze “Highly Irregular”

The Office of Management and Budget’s Mark Sandy, breaking a White House stonewall, said in a Saturday deposition that the aid freeze was highly irregular with senior OMB officials unable to provide an explanation.

Sandy, the OMB’s deputy associate director for national security programs, said he was instructed to sign the letter suspending the assistance, according to “two people familiar with his testimony”.

Officials from other US agencies have testified that Mick Mulvaney, the OMB’s director and the White House Chief of Staff, carried out Trump’s order to cut off the aid. The command was verbally circulated by the OMB in mid-July.

They said the letter was dated July 25, the day of the Trump-Zelenskiy call. The signature of Sandy’s boss, political appointee Michael Duffey, is on subsequent letters.

Sandy testified that he had never before witnesses a senior political OMB official assume control of an aid portfolio in such a manner.

Morrison said that Bolton met privately with Trump in August to seek the release of the aid. Trump was unmoved, and Bolton tried to marshal other agency heads to reverse the suspension.

The NSC’s Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified behind closed doors that he drafted a memorandum for Trump to lift the freeze, but Trump refused to sign it.