Trump's claim on halting Ukraine aid contradicted by Pentagon official Laura Cooper

According to a new report from The Daily Beast, after the Pentagon's June announcement that it would give Ukraine $250 million in aid, Defense Department officials received a list of questions, seemingly originating from President Trump, seeking information about the aid.

“We got a question from my chain of command forwarded down from the chief of staff, I believe, from the Department of Defense, asking for a follow-up on a meeting with the President,” top Pentagon official Laura Cooper testified on Capitol Hill last month. “The way the email was phrased, it said follow-up from POTUS meeting, so follow-up from a meeting with the President. So, you know, I'm thinking that the questions were probably questions from the President. That's how I interpreted that subject line.”

Cooper also undermined Trump's defense against impeachment. As NBC News reported:

Top Republicans, including Trump himself, have said there couldn't have been a quid pro quo because, they claim, the Ukrainians were not aware that military aid was being withheld in the first place.

However, Cooper testified that she had concluded from conversations she'd had with Kurt Volker, the then-U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, and Taylor, that that couldn't possibly be true.

"I knew from my Kurt Volker conversation and also from sort of the alarm bells that were coming from Ambassador Taylor and his team that there were Ukrainians who knew about this," she said, according to the transcript.