By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - A top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine thought it was "crazy" to withhold military aid for the country as it confronted Russian aggression, according to evidence presented on Thursday in an impeachment probe of President Donald Trump.
Trump's former special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volker, testified on Thursday for more than eight hours to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and staff of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight Committees.
Volker resigned last week after he was named in a whistleblower complaint about the Trump administration and Ukraine the prompted the House's Democratic leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to announce the start of a formal impeachment inquiry.
As part of Thursday's testimony, Volker turned over text messages between himself, diplomats in Kiev and others involved with Ukraine, including Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who played a major part in the administration's dealing with Kiev.
The texts provide the first insider account of last summer's negotiations between Washington and Kiev.
In the several pages of messages released by the Democratic leaders of the committees, U.S. diplomats discussed setting up the July 25 telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that has been central to the impeachment investigation into whether Trump should be removed from office.
Trump asked Zelenskiy in that call to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading rival in Trump's bid for re-election in 2020.
The committee leaders made the text messages public late on Thursday, along with a copy of a letter to other members of the House expressing "grave concern" about what they described as Trump's actions and accusing him of a campaign of misdirection in relation to the impeachment inquiry.
However, Republicans who participated in the interview of Volker, said the evidence he presented fell far short of a "quid pro quo" - exchanging or withholding U.S. assistance according to whether Ukraine helped damage a Trump political rival.
In a text from Sept. 9, after news that the Trump administration had been withholding military assistance for Kiev, William Taylor, the U.S. chargé d'affaires in the Ukrainian capital, discussed the importance of the message Washington was sending to Kiev.
"With the hold (the delay in delivering the military aid), we have already shaken their faith in us," Taylor said in a text message to Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.