Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Wednesday’s impeachment hearings took an unexpected twist when a Pentagon official dropped a bomb and revealed that Ukrainian officials were aware of a freeze in military aid on July 25.

That was the same day President Donald Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to deliver him political dirt.

Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, also gave noteworthy testimony by confirming a quid pro quo with Ukraine.

Sondland said „everyone,“ including top officials at the White House and State Department, knew what was going on.

Meanwhile, David Hale, a State Department official and the GOP’s witness in Wednesday’s hearings, ended up undermining the party’s case to defend Trump, as did previous Republican witnesses.

Scroll down to read the biggest takeaways from the marathon testimony.

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Wednesday’s public impeachment hearings featured three more officials who testified after being subpoenaed.

They are:

Gordon Sondland, the US’s ambassador to the European Union.

Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Defense.

David Hale, the undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department

Sondland was initially believed to be the key witness on Wednesday, but Cooper took the spotlight when she revealed damning new information that undermined President Donald Trump’s entire defense in the snowballing Ukraine scandal.

Here are the biggest takeaways from Wednesday’s hearings:

Cooper revealed that her staff received two emails from the State Department on July 25 asking about US military aid to Ukraine. This is a massive revelation. Trump spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on that day and repeatedly pressured Zelensky to launch politically motivated investigations that would benefit his reelection campaign. At the time, the president had ordered a freeze on the security assistance and was withholding a White House meeting Zelensky desperately sought. A whistleblower complaint about the phone call and events surrounding it prompted sharp accusations that the president abused his power by trying to strongarm Ukraine into delivering political dirt while withholding vital military aid. Trump has defended himself by saying that Ukraine didn’t even know about the aid freeze until it was publicly reported by Politico in late August, and if Zelensky didn’t know the US was withholding aid, he couldn’t have felt pressured during their call. Cooper’s testimony throws a wrench into that.



Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs Laura Cooper takes her seat at a House Intelligence Committee impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump Loren Elliot/Reuters

Cooper outlined three separate inquiries about the Ukraine aid on July 25. An email from the State Department at 2:31 p.m. that said, „the Ukrainian embassy and the House Foreign Affairs Committee are asking about security assistance.“ An email from the State Department at 4:25 p.m. that said, „that the Hill knows about the [frozen military funds] situation to an extent, and so does the Ukrainian embassy.“ A member of Cooper’s staff got a question from a Ukrainian embassy official saying, „What is going on with Ukraine security assistance?“

The Republicans‘ witness undermined their case (again). Hale was on the GOP witness list but, like other Republican witnesses before him, his testimony did more to hurt the party than to help. Hale testified that Trump and the Office of Management and Budget — which ordered the freeze at Trump’s directive — were at odds with every other federal agency on the decision. „The State Department advocated, as I did in that meeting, for proceeding with all of the assistance, consistent with our policies and interests in Ukraine,“ he said, referring to an interagency meeting that took place in July. He also defended Masha Yovanovitch, the US’s former ambassador to Ukraine who was abruptly recalled in May following what she characterized as a „smear campaign“ against her by Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Yovanovitch has been publicly attacked by Trump since coming forward to testify, and Hale said Wednesday that the way she was treated was wrong. Hale agreed that Yovanovitch is a „dedicated and courageous patriot“ and that she served with dignity and grace in the face of the president’s „smear campaign.“



gordon sondland REUTERS/Loren Elliott