'Nothing to See Here': Diplomats Urged to Play Down Release of Ukraine Aid

[swag]

Source: New York Times


By Lara Jakes
Oct. 9, 2019, 10:34 a.m. ET


WASHINGTON — American diplomats who had pushed for the Trump administration to restore security funding to Ukraine were advised by the White House to play down the release of the money when it was finally approved, documents show.

“Keep moving, people, nothing to see here …” Brad Freden, the State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary overseeing issues in Europe and Eurasia, wrote in a Sept. 12 email obtained by The New York Times.

He said the National Security Council would not publicly announce that $141 million in State Department assistance was being restored after being held up in what the White House described as a normal review.

The money is now at the heart of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats into whether President Trump withheld a total of $391 million in funding as he sought damaging information on his political opponents from Ukraine’s newly-elected leader.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/europe/ukraine-aid-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

[dawg day]

1. The diplomat sounds quite sardonic here.

He sounds like he is expressing his own annoyance and recognizing the similar feelings of the recipients of the message- "Yeah, we know that the SoS and president have been extorting by withholding this... but we're not supposed to notice, remember!"

I do not know how all these civil servants who work for agencies and departments, who might have spent a decade trying to help relations between Ukraine and the US, deal with all this Trumpian perfidy-- and their own leaders are in on it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. All part of the coverup of the phone call that we have the 1/3 transcript. . . . nt