Lisa Desjardins:

That's right.

And let's start with Laura Cooper. She's a Defense Department official, which is a unique perspective here . Usually, you have been hearing from the diplomats. She is the deputy assistant defense secretary, specializes in Russia. She says that's where she spends most of her time.

But she also works on long-term strategy for Russia and for Ukraine. She has been with the Defense Department since 2001, but she says this year at one point almost all of her time was spent on Ukraine because of what was happening.

In her transcript, which, as you say, we have just got, we learned that there was high concern and surprise when the aid money to Ukraine was being frozen. The Department of Justice — Department of Defense was one of the last to sign off on that. They did sign off in June.

She said, when they learned it was frozen — that is something she oversees — no one understood it, and, even more, Judy — this is interesting — she says seniors involved in that process questioned if they legally could freeze it, because Congress had already appropriated those millions of dollars, and it was ready to go.

They weren't sure even the president had the ability to stop that money from flowing to Ukraine.