Ron Johnson says he was blocked by President Trump from telling Ukraine foreign aid was coming

Cribbing this from the reddit thread on this topic because it's a decent summary:

Holy shit, Johnson acknowledges it was extortion:

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was blocked by President Donald Trump in August from telling Ukraine's president that U.S. aid was on its way in the wake of accusations Trump was withholding it until the eastern European nation investigated his political rival.

Trump rejected Johnson's request after refusing in May to back new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Johnson told reporters Friday.

“I was surprised by the president’s reaction and realized we had a sales job to do,” Johnson said during a constituent stop in Sheboygan. “I tried to convince him (in August) to give me the authority to tell President Zelensky that we were going to provide that. Now, I didn’t succeed."

The original Wall Street Journal article has even more:

Mr. Johnson said Mr. Sondland told him, Ukraine would appoint a strong prosecutor general and move to “get to the bottom of what happened in 2016—if President Trump has that confidence, then he’ll release the military spending,” recounted Mr. Johnson.

“At that suggestion, I winced,” Mr. Johnson said. “My reaction was: Oh, God. I don’t want to see those two things combined.”

Sondland, a wealthy businessman who donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural, was literally the only person in the text messages released last night who suggested that the deal wasn't a quid pro quo (while desperately trying to get the other ambassadors to stop talking about the quid pro quo in text and call him instead). Now, a GOP Senator just admitted Sondland told him it was.

It's all falling apart.