No matter the endless complaints from President Donald Trump and his supporters, House Democrats have continued to majorly build their case against the president over his plot to exchange military aid and a summit in D.C. for dirt from Ukraine on his domestic political opponents. Now, emails have been newly revealed from the time when that aid was held up as leverage behind Trump’s demands for dirt, and the documents feature a direct assertion from a top political appointee at the White House that the aid delay was the president’s explicit directive. Trump can’t get out of this one!
The explicit revelation of a directive from the president to delay the aid is featured in an email from Michael Duffey, who serves as the associate director of national security programs at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). On August 30, in response to concern from acting Pentagon comptroller Elaine McCusker that the aid wouldn’t be able to be sent out at all if the delay continued for much longer, Duffey insisted that there was a “clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”
That email portion was redacted in document releases that the president’s team made in response to a recent court ruling, and — unsurprisingly considering the president’s overall refusal to comply — the White House did not provide the information to House impeachment investigators. Why would they be so desperate to conceal this information if they didn’t know that they had something to be worried about and hide?
Dems have wanted to Duffey to testify, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) commented:
‘The newly-revealed unredacted emails are a devastating blow to Senator McConnell’s push to have a trial without the documents and witnesses we’ve requested. These emails further expose the serious concerns raised by Trump administration officials about the propriety and legality of the president’s decision to cut off aid to Ukraine to benefit himself.’
McCusker had apparently first raised concerns about the aid all the way back in late July, when Trump personally spoke to Ukraine’s president on the phone and demanded investigations into his opponents, and later on, according to the newly revealed documents, she was also concerned that OMB wasn’t even accurately representing Defense Department concerns to figures inside the White House.
An anonymous Defense Department official told CNN:
‘We were always concerned about the ramifications of holding the military assistance to Ukraine. This is due to the fact it was appropriated by Congress and had been notified to Congress already prior to the hold being placed and the need to obligate the money by the end of the fiscal year, something the hold had prevented. These concerns were ‘raised multiple times with OMB’ via multiple channels.’
No matter the now amply available documentation showing conflict within the administration over the abrupt aid hold, an OMB spokesperson came up with the absolutely outlandish defense to CNN that everything was actually getting along just fine.
They claimed, in reference to the respective sides of the issue:
‘There was agreement every step of the way between DOD and OMB lawyers, who were responsible for working out the details of the hold, in line with the President’s priorities.’
No matter the Trump admin’s apparent insistence on sticking their heads in the sand, the president has now been impeached over the scandal of his attempt to bribe Ukraine into investigating his opponents. The next stage of the process is the Senate trial covering the charges against the president.
