7:26 p.m. ET, November 11, 2019
Ukrainian officials expressed concerns about aid hold "very early on," State Department official said
From CNN's Zachary Cohen
Catherine Croft, former Ukraine specialist at the National Security Council, leaves the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at the US Capitol on Oct. 30 in Washington, DC.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
State Department official Catherine Croft testified that multiple Ukrainian officials raised concerns about the hold on aid “very early on” and told her they did not want the news to become public as it would be viewed in Ukraine as an expression of declining US support.
The Ukrainian officials quietly reached out to Croft, she said, after one of the July meetings in which the hold on military assistance was discussed, prior to news of the hold appearing in the media on Aug. 28.
“Two individuals from the Ukrainian Embassy approached me quietly and in confidence to ask me about an [Office of Management and Budget] hold on Ukraine security assistance,” Croft said, adding she was surprised word had reached the officials who contacted her.
“I remember telling them that I was confident that any issues in process would get resolved. And I knew from my understanding of having worked with these individuals for a long time that they had no interest in this information getting out into the public,” she added.
Asked why the Ukrainians did not want news of the hold to be made public, Croft said, “I think that if this were public in Ukraine it would be seen as a reversal of our policy and would, just to say sort of candidly and colloquially, this would be a really big deal, it would be a really big deal in Ukraine, and an expression of declining U.S. support for Ukraine,” she said according to the transcript.
“As long as they thought that in the end the hold would be lifted, they had no reason for this to want to come out," she added.