84 Time December 23–30, 2019
be legal issues and urging them to consult the
OMB’s lawyers. Then, on July 30, the Trump
political appointee took over control of the aid
himself: something no one in the division re-
members happening before. By mid- August,
as the end of the fiscal year approached, the
Pentagon lawyers were growing increasingly
concerned about how to lawfully implement
a lengthy hold.
In the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, officials
grew baffled too. During a secure teleconfer-
ence on July 18, an OMB official made clear to
embassy staff that the aid was frozen. Taylor
and his aides sat in astonishment. Eight days
later, Taylor traveled to the war zone in east-
ern Ukraine. A local commander showed him
a damaged bridge stretching across the front
line toward Russian forces, close enough to see
the glint of their binoculars. It happened to be
the commander’s birthday, and he thanked his
American guest for the aid that had been so
vital in deterring a Russian attack. Embar-
rassed and uncomfortable, Taylor thought to
himself, “More Ukrainians would undoubtedly
die without the U.S. assistance.”
The following month, Taylor did somethinghe had never done in his half-century in gov-
ernment service: send a cable directly to the
Secretary of State. The diplomat described
“the ‘folly’ I saw in withholding military aid
to Ukraine at a time when hostilities were still
active in the east and when Russia was watch-
ing closely to gauge the level of American sup-
port for the Ukrainian government.” He never
received a reply. The State Department did not
respond to requests for comment.
At the White House, the dissent was be-
ginning to be felt. Eisenberg had fielded com-
plaints from at least four national-security
officers alleging that the President was lever-
aging Ukraine policy in potentially illegal ways.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s office had
learned of the intelligence analyst’s concerns
soon after Trump’s July 25 call. In late August,
Eisenberg and Cipollone met with Trump
about the whistle-blower’s complaint. There
is no public account of the meeting, and the
White House declined to provide comment. But
one thing is clear: Trump did not back down.
Neither did the public servants. On Sept. 9,
soon after the analyst’s phone call with the
Inspector General’s office, a lawyer for theTHE HOUSE
Democrats used the
testimony of the public
servants as the basis for
articles of impeachment
introduced on Dec. 10(^2019) GUARDIANS OF THE YEAR