WASHINGTON — It was not the message that the White House and its supporters have been trying to hammer home in recent weeks as the impeachment investigation has intensified on Capitol Hill: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said Thursday that President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in part to pressure Kiev to pursue a politically motivated investigation into the 2016 election.

His comments — even after he issued a statement walking back his remarks — undercut weeks of denials from Mr. Trump, his aides, Republican lawmakers and the conservative news media that the president was seeking a quid pro quo in his dealings with the new Ukrainian president. Some of their statements were focused on a July 25 phone call between Mr. Trump and the president of Ukraine in which Mr. Trump repeatedly brought up his desire for investigations into political rivals. Others touched specifically on Mr. Trump’s decision in July to hold up the $391 million package of security aid to Ukraine, a development that government officials there said they only learned about at the end of August.

[What is a quid pro quo? Here’s how the phrase has been used in past legal contexts.]

OCT. 16, 2019

1. President Trump

“Now, all of a sudden, quid pro quo doesn’t matter because now they see, in the call, there was no quid pro quo.”

— In remarks at the White House



The New York Times also found several other instances of Mr. Trump proclaiming “no quid pro quo” on Twitter, in remarks to reporters, in news conferences and at political rallies.