NEWLY RELEASED OMB EMAILS SHOW TRUMP'S UKRAINE AID DECEPTION

 

On Saturday the Center for Public Integrity published 147 pages of emails they received through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request concerning the Trump administration's hold on Ukrainian military aid that eventually led to the current impeachment. This hasn’t received a lot of attention in the mainstream press, probably because there wasn’t any single bombshell revelation in it, however there’s some important stuff here.

The document that’s getting the most attention is an email from Michael Duffey of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Duffey indicated they had received guidance from the administration that assistance to Ukraine was on hold. That’s not exactly a news flash, but it is confirmation of what has already been testified to. Duffey goes on to write, “I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction.” That begs the question why was it a secret? If the request was, as President Trump has characterized it, a simple request to launch an anti-corruption investigation to receive the aid, why wasn’t he actively tweeting about it and proudly proclaiming he was rooting out Ukrainian corruption? Of course, that also ignores the fact that the transcript of the call to Ukrainian President Zelensky reveals the “favor” Trump requested wasn’t an investigation into corruption, but rather, an investigation specifically into his political rival Joe Biden.

The final important thing about this email is the timing, it was sent about 90 minutes after President Trump’s phone conversation with the Ukrainian President on July 25th. We know the initial decision to withhold the aid was made at least 3 weeks prior to this and key people were made aware of the hold about a week before. But following the President’s request for a “favor” from President Zelensky, the policy was being put out to ensure the aid was not paid, and with a special note to keep it quiet. This email makes it absolutely clear that the order to withhold the aid came from the White House and that the policy was officially implemented in coordination with the request for a “favor” from the Ukrainian President.

Earlier I asked why the hold on aid was kept a secret, but actually we know why, Trump knew he was breaking the law. Actually, he was breaking several laws, bribery, extortion, campaign finance, but those have all been discussed extensively, however he was also breaking an important government finance law as well. These emails are heavily redacted, which is an issue by itself, but it’s clear that the people who work in the various agencies who deal with government accounting were concerned about the delays in obligating and distributing these funds. The cause of their concern was the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. This law was passed following the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, he had a habit of hijacking funds appropriated by Congress. This act prohibits the President from unilaterally stopping, delaying or misusing funds from a legally binding appropriations bill. There are times when there is a legitimate reason to make a change to an appropriation bill after it’s signed into law, that’s why the Impoundment Act has a provision that allows the President to make a request for a change to an appropriation. Under this provision, after notifying Congress of the request for a change, the President can put a hold of up to 45 days on the funds in question. In this case, however, rather than notifying Congress, the Trump administration made it a point to keep the hold a secret. This was a flagrant and intentional violation of the law.

These emails make it clear that there was growing concern about the delay in obligating these funds as the delay stretched on. The fact that there wasn’t any reasonable explanation for the hold didn’t help. Even as the OMB was preparing to finally make the payment after news of the whistle-blower became public on September 11th, a key OMB official wrote, “I still have no insight on the rationale for the hold.” If there was a legitimate reason for the hold, why didn’t the President follow the law and make a request to Congress to delay the funding and why was the reason for the hold kept a secret from the very people who had to implement the policy? Of course, we now know it’s because the reason for the hold was to benefit the Trump re-election campaign and not the American people or America’s interests.

Finally, there’s the issue of the redactions of these emails. All of these emails are unclassified budget communications. Although there might be a legitimate reason for some redactions, it’s difficult to come up with a plausible explanation for the fact that approximately three-quarters of the text from these emails are blacked out. Again, all these emails were sent through the unclassified email system. Despite all the claims of innocence from the Trump administration, there is a clear pattern of trying to withhold information from the public. This is evident from Trump’s attempts to obstruct the Mueller investigation, the blanket refusal to cooperate with the Congressional investigations and now the overly aggressive redacting of FOIA requests. These emails are adding to the mounting stack of evidence of the President’s abuse of power and giving greater impetus for his removal from owice.

Here’s a link to the Center for Public Integrity’s story about the released emails: (https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/trump-administration-owicialsworried-ukraine-aid-halt-violated-spending-law/)

Here’s a link to the page on the House of Representatives site that discusses the Impoundment Control Act of 1974: (https://budget.house.gov/publications/report/impoundment-control-act-1974-what-itwhy-does-it-matter)

UPDATE: 3 January 2020, On January 2, 2020, JustSecurity.org announced that they were able to view the unredacted emails discussed above. They are confirming that most of the redactions dealt with frank warnings that the hold on Ukrainian aid was illegal and clearly indicate that it was President Trump who directly ordered the hold. So, on top of everything else this White House has done, they are now redacting “Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) request for purely political reasons. These emails show that the DoD repeatedly warned the OMB that the hold violated the Impoundment Control Act and that Congress needed to be told of the hold. The DoD also warned the OMB that the wording they put in their guidance ordering the hold was inaccurate and that the hold would likely result in some of the Ukrainian aid not being obligated by the end of the fiscal year, which is exactly what happened. In response to this they were told that the decision to put a hold on the aid came straight from President Trump. There’s a reason Trump is doing everything in his power to withhold documents and prevent officials from testifying. Every time information is released the scope of President Trump’s crimes comes a little more into focus. We, the American people need to demand that the Senate allow every relevant witness to testify. Democracy withers and dies in the dark, regardless of your political ideology, we all need the light shown on every action the White House took on the Ukraine matter so we can get to the bottom of what happened if we are to ever move on as a people. Here the URL to the Just Security story, (https://www.justsecurity.org/67863/exclusive-unredacted-ukraine-documentsreveal-extent-of-pentagons-legal-concerns/)