MULVANEY: Yeah. No, the money held up had absolutely nothing to do with Biden. There’s no — and that was the point I made to you.

QUESTION: — And you’re drawing the distinction? You’re saying that it would be wrong to hold up money for the Bidens —

MULVANEY: — There were three — three factors. Again — I was involved with the — the process by which the money was held up temporarily, okay? Three issues for that: the corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of the Ukraine, and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That’s completely legitimate.

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QUESTION: You just said you were involved in the process in which — you know, the money being held up temporarily. You named three issues for that —

MULVANEY: Yeah.

QUESTION: — The corruption in the country, whether or not the country would look — they were assisting with an ongoing investigation of corruption. How is that not an establishment of an exchange, of a quid pro quo? You just seem to continue to be establishing this —

MULVANEY: Those are the terms that you used. I mean, go look at what Gordon Sondland said today in his — in his testimony. It was that — I think in his opening statement he said something along the lines of they were trying to get the — the deliverable. And the deliverable was a statement by the Ukraine about how they were going to deal with corruption, okay? Go read his testimony if you haven’t already. And what he says is, and he’s right, that’s absolutely ordinary course of business. This is — this is what you do when you have someone come to the White House, when you either arrange a visit for the president, you have a phone call with the president, a lot of times we use that as the opportunity to get them to make a statement of their policy or to announce something that they’re going to do. It’s one of the reasons we can’t, you know, you can sort of announce that at — he — on the phone call or at the meeting. This is the ordinary course of foreign policy.