joins us now, eric lipton, investigative reporter at "the new york times," one of the authors of this investigative piece on ukraine. mr. lipton, i appreciate you being here. thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> so your reporting said that the white house did for a time, at least according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry, the white house did hold up the sale of javelin missiles to ukraine around the same time that ukraine decided to freeze these criminal investigations into the president's campaign chair, paul manafort. both of those things happened. they seemed to have happened close to each other in time. does your reporting suggest those things were definitely linked? >> not necessarily. we don't have evidence that demonstrates that convincingly. and the matter -- the holdup here was only a matter of weeks that omb potentially was holding up the release of the javelins. it was in december of 2017 that the state department had announced that it was approving the sale and then in march given final approval. by april, the first of the javelins had arrived. the holdup was not