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Trump Budget Official Questioned Legality of Hold on Ukraine Aid

Trump Budget Official Questioned Legality of Hold on Ukraine Aid

(Bloomberg) -- A White House budget official said he warned his superiors that a hold on security assistance for Ukraine could be illegal, and he waited months for an explanation for the delay he described as unusual, according to transcripts released Tuesday.

Mark Sandy, who was responsible for national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget, testified to the House impeachment inquiry that budget officials were told in mid-July that President Donald Trump had directed that the Ukraine aid be held up. Despite questions from OMB officials no explanation was given nor was any time frame for the hold set out.

Trump Budget Official Questioned Legality of Hold on Ukraine Aid

Sandy, a career official, said that as he and others raised questions about the delay responsibility for releasing the funds was taken from him in July and given to a political appointee, Michael Duffey, to whom he reported.

“As the hold was extended, we continued to express concerns about the potential implications vis-à-vis the Impoundment Control Act,” Sandy said in his Nov. 16 testimony. “We expressed those concerns to Mike Duffey, and, on every occasion, we advised him to speak to the general counsel.”

Under the 1974 law, the executive branch is legally obligated to spend the money that Congress approved in a bill the president signed into law.

Sandy said it wasn’t until September -- after members of Congress began questioning the delay and a whistle-blower raised an alarm about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president -- that an explanation for why the nearly $400 million in aid for Ukraine had not yet been spent.

“I recall in early September an email that attributed the hold to the president’s concern about other countries not contributing more to Ukraine,” he said.

The three House committees leading the impeachment inquiry released the transcripts from Sandy and Philip Reeker, a State Department official, as part of the evidence collected behind closed doors and in public hearings over the past two months. The two documents provide additional accounts of two events central to the allegations against President Donald Trump: the motivation for withholding aid for Ukraine and the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv.

‘Giuliani-Biden Issue’

Reeker, a career member of the Foreign Service who is responsible for Europe and Eurasia affairs, said he pushed State Department leadership including Secretary Michael Pompeo to voice support for then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. She was facing a smear campaign led by Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and conservative media personalities, which ultimately resulted in her being recalled from her post in May.

Reeker said William Taylor, who became the top U.S. envoy in Ukraine after Yovanovitch’s departure, expressed concern about two investigations -- of Joe Biden’s work in Ukraine as vice president and of the 2016 election -- that Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian leaders to announce.

“That was what, I think, Bill was worried about, and he said again, I quote, ‘The Giuliani Biden issue will likely persist for the next year. I’m not sure S,’ the Secretary, ‘can give me reassurance on this issue,’” Reeker said.

One of the central questions of the impeachment inquiry is to establish a link between those investigations and the hold that the Trump administration had put on much-needed security assistance for Ukraine to resist Russian aggression.

Sandy said he was told that Trump first started questioning the Ukraine aid on July 19 after seeing a media report. Reeker also gave roughly the same date for the issue becoming a topic of internal discussion, adding that his “operating understanding was that this was being held by Mr. Mulvaney, the White House Acting Chief of Staff.”

Burden Sharing

Sandy wasn’t the only person in the administration who was worried about the legality of withholding money appropriated Congress. He testified that two people from OMB resigned in part because of their concerns. One of those people worked in the agency’s legal division.

GOP members of the House committees repeatedly demanded that Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff release the transcript of Sandy’s Nov. 16 testimony, saying that it supports Trump’s defense that he was concerned about whether other nations were aiding Ukraine.

Republicans have pointed to this explanation as proof that Trump’s concern was about sharing the burden for supporting Ukraine and wasn’t related to the investigations, which Trump also raised in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The aid for Ukraine was eventually released roughly two weeks before the end of the fiscal year when it would have expired. That was after House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairmen were notified that the anonymous whistle-blower complaint about Trump mentioning domestic political objectives in his call with Zelenskiy was being withheld.

The Intelligence, Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs panels also released nine transcripts of closed-door committee discussions that took place on days other witnesses did not show for their requested testimony, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.

In most of those transcripts, Schiff argues that such “stonewalling” buttresses a case for obstruction of the inquiry.

--With assistance from Steven T. Dennis and Erik Wasson.

To contact the reporters on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net;Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Joe Sobczyk

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.