Kurt Volker, the US's former special envoy to Ukraine, told Congress that President Donald Trump's chief diplomat in Ukraine said it was "crazy" to withhold military aid in exchange for political favors.

"I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Bill Taylor, the US's Chargés d'Affaires in Ukraine, said in a group text message with Volker and US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.

Volker is the first current or former Trump administration official to testify to Congress as part of its formal impeachment inquiry into the president.

The former diplomat's testimony Thursday comes as Democratic lawmakers conduct a flurry of investigations into whether Trump used a July phone call with Ukraine's president to pressure him to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

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The US's chief diplomat in Ukraine said it was "crazy" for President Donald Trump to withhold military aid from Ukraine for political reasons, ABC News reported Thursday.


Bill Taylor was the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and returned as the Chargés d'Affaires in the US embassy in Ukraine in June."I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Taylor said in a text message with two colleagues that was shared with Congress in closed-door testimony Thursday.

The individual who provided the message to lawmakers, Kurt Volker, was one of the participants in the group chat.


Volker served until recently as the US's Special Envoy to Ukraine. But he was forced to resign last week amid a firestorm surrounding his involvement in putting Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in touch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's aides at the request of the State Department.

Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union who was also in the group, replied to Taylor's message, writing that his claim was "incorrect." He added that Trump had been "crystal clear" there was "no quid pro quo of any kind."


Sondland then said they should end the group text, writing, "I suggest we stop the back and forth by text."

Volker was called to testify before Congress after being mentioned in an explosive whistleblower complaint that a US intelligence official filed against Trump.

At the heart of the complaint is a July 25 phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which he repeatedly pressed Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Biden is a 2020 Democratic frontrunner and one of Trump's chief political rivals.


The complaint alleged that Trump used the power of his office to "solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 US election. Giuliani is described as a "central figure in this effort," and it said Attorney General William Barr "appears to be involved as well."

Trump had ordered his administration to withhold the nearly $400 million military-aid package to Ukraine days before the phone call with Zelensky.

While the White House's notes on the call showed that Trump did not directly mention offering aid in exchange for Zelensky's assistance in investigating the Bidens, they confirmed that Trump brought up how the US does "a lot for Ukraine" right before asking Zelensky to do him a "favor" by investigating Biden and discrediting the former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.


Giuliani, who was named 31 times in the complaint, took to cable news after the document was released and displayed what he said were text messages between himself and Volker that appear to show Volker contacting him and setting up a meeting between Giuliani and one of Zelensky's top aides, Andriy Yermak.

A State Department spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal Volker put Giuliani in touch with Yermak at Yermak's request. "Mr. Giuliani is a private citizen and acts in a personal capacity as a lawyer for President Trump," the spokesman said. "He does not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government."


Giuliani met or interacted with several other Ukrainian officials while working as Trump's personal lawyer and trying to dig up dirt on the Bidens, the whistleblower's complaint alleged. Volker testified to lawmakers on Thursday that he warned Giuliani he was receiving untrustworthy information from Ukrainian officials about the Bidens, the Washington Post reported

At the root of Giuliani's and Trump's efforts is their unsubstantiated claim that the former vice president pushed for the firing of then Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin because Shokin was investigating the Ukrainian natural gas extraction company Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden sat on the board of the company until earlier this year.

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