Politics can be a confusing, drama-filled, he said-she said mess. As a matter-of-fact, politics can be worse than the high school mean girls cilck, and yet, there is really nothing that can be done to change that. And, although politics is not usually our cup of tea here at Stilettos & Lace Magazine, we are going to wade around the shallow end of the pool of politics for a change of pace. And we are going to have a peek at what's happening with the U.S. Pentagon ordering the preservation of all records relating to Ukraine.

Amid the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump and his administration's actions regarding Ukraine, the Pentagon's chief legal officer has requested that Defense Department agencies identify, preserve, and collect any and all documents relating to the provision of security assistance to Kiev.

The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative is the program which included the $250 million in military aid to Ukraine that the Trump Administration froze in June, a freeze that baffled multiple U.S. and Ukraine officials and has led to accusations that the administration was seeking to levrage that assistance to compel the new government in Kiev to investigate Trump's political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden.

The chief spokesman for the Pentagon called the action to preserve records relating to Ukraine "routine".

"With regard to the general counsel memo, my understanding is this is a family standard practice, that when there's a significant level of congressional or (Inspector General) interest in --in a matter, for the department to take steps, proactively, to ensure that -- that these materials are available. So to me, I think it seems to be a fairly routine but proactive measure that  we're taking," the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Jonathon Hoffman, said at a press briefing on Thursday.

Late last month a group of seven Democratic senators wrote a letter to the Department of Defense's Office of Inspector General requesting that it mount an investigation into why the Ukraine military aid was held up. A spokesperson for the Inspector General's office said that it had "received Senator Durbin's letter and are reviewing the request to investigate." Four months after the aid to Ukraine, which included 50 caliber sniper rifles and grenade launchers, was frozen, it is still unclear exactly why Trump ordered it to be held up.

The Pentagon had already announced the plan to provide the millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, and in May, the Department of Defense and the State Department had notified congressional oversight committees that aid to Ukraine was ready for distribution. 

The grab bag of explanations the administration has offered for the hold up - and the President's continued fixation on the Biden family - has fueled suspicion  that the delay was politically motivated.

At least one U.S. diplomat, the Charge d'affaires in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, appeared to see a connection between the proposed Biden investigations and the security assistance, calling such a linkage "crazy" in a series of recently revealed text messages between him and several other U.S. diplomats involved in Ukraine.

On Thursday the State Department announced that it had approved a potential sale of 150 additional Javilin missiles to Ukraine, a sale that the to U.S. military officer in Europe, Gen. Tod Wolters, said that he supported.

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courtesy of CNN.com