(CNN)New transcripts of witness testimony and news reports revealing key
details on the Ukraine scandal timeline
show in vivid detail the way President Donald Trump and top
officials maneuvered behind the scenes to block aid to Ukraine as the President
sought an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden.
The new revelations, coming at a
time when half of Americans support impeaching and removing the President even
though impeachment proceedings
have not moved the needle of public opinion, underscored the problem for Trump
and his supporters in Congress: Public hearings in the impeachment inquiry may
be in the rearview mirror, but new details about his pressure campaign on
Ukraine continue to trickle out.
The developments on Tuesday illuminated
the fact that there's still much to learn about the President's actions
regarding Ukraine as the House races toward a potential vote on impeachment by
Christmas.
The President's claims of innocence looked even more incredulous Tuesday night after The New York Times reported that Trump released the hold on Ukraine aid after he was briefed on the whistleblower report outlining his dealings with Ukraine.
That report and newly released
transcripts of impeachment witness testimony undercut key arguments that the
Republicans have been making as they have defended the President, who cast the
impeachment inquiry during his Florida rally Tuesday night as a
"scam," a "witchhunt" and a "hoax."
During the impeachment hearings
earlier this month, Republicans spooled out various theories about why the
White House might have frozen aid to Ukraine -- from the notion that Trump was
concerned about corruption to the idea that he wanted to see more financial
contributions to the Ukraine aid from other foreign countries.
But the timeline revealed Tuesday,
in conjunction with the transcript of testimony from Office of Management and
Budget Official Mark Sandy, outlines an indisputably clear set of facts about
the bizarre way the Ukraine aid was handled.
The confusion that Sandy and other
line-level OMB aides felt about why the Ukraine aid was being withheld, along
with their inability to get answers, showed how the Trump administration's
unusual enterprise was shrouded in secrecy, even from the very people who were
handling the money.
Timeline
undercuts Trump's defense
First the timeline: We now know that
White House budget office took its first official action to withhold $250
million in aid to Ukraine on the evening of July 25, according to a House
Budget Committee summary of the office's documents.
That was the very same day that
Trump spoke by phone with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, prefacing his
request for an investigation of the 2016 election with the now infamous phrase
"I would like you to do us a favor, though." Agencies had been
notified at a July 18 meeting that the aid had been frozen by the President, a
week before the call.
Sandy, the Office of Management and
Budget official who signed off on the initial Ukraine aid freeze before a Trump
political appointee took over that task, testified that the President's
interest in the aid dated back to June, but that he couldn't get an explanation
of why the aid was withheld in July or August.
The request was so unusual that
Sandy immediately told his boss that the freeze could violate an obscure
federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act, which prohibits a sitting
president from unilaterally withholding funds that were appropriated by
Congress.
Sandy knew that the aid fell into
the category of "one-year funds" -- meaning the money (totaling
nearly $400 million) was only available until September 30. He told his boss,
Trump political appointee Michael Duffey, that he wanted to talk to the lawyers
at the Office of Management and Budget.
Sandy and other OMB aides were so
alarmed by the inexplicable hold that they also sent a memo to Duffey
recommending that hold be released because "assistance to Ukraine is
consistent with the national security strategy," Sandy testified, and had
the added benefit of "opposing Russian aggression."
In his closed-door deposition, Sandy
also directly debunked the Republican talking point that the hold on the aid
was related to Trump's concern that other nations should be contributing more
in national security assistance to Ukraine.
Sandy testified that the White House
didn't ask the budget office for information about how much other nations were
contributing until September -- months after the hold was placed.
"I recall in early September an
email that attributed the hold to the President's concern about other countries
not contributing money to Ukraine," Sandy testified. By that
time, lawmakers were asking questions about the freeze on aid to Ukraine and
reports questioning the reasons for the withholding had already hit the press.
New testimony from State Department
official Philip Reeker underscores the fact that the administration's hold on
aid to Ukraine was orchestrated at the highest levels of power in the White
House.
Reeker, the acting assistant
secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, testified
that he believed the security assistance to Ukraine was "being held by Mr.
Mulvaney, the White House Acting Chief of Staff," but that he did not have
"definitive knowledge that Mulvaney was behind the holdup."
"Our operating understanding
was that this was being held by Mr. Mulvaney, the White House Acting Chief of
Staff," Reeker told lawmakers, according to the transcript.
Reeker also testified about the
concerns of veteran diplomats like Kurt Volker about the maneuverings of Rudy
Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer, who has been accused of trying to
orchestrate the quid pro quo of a White House meeting in exchange for an
investigation of the Bidens. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either
Biden.
"I do recall him telling me ...
that, well, he was going to reach out to or was going to speak to
Giuliani," Reeker said of Volker, the former US special representative to
Ukraine. "And I think Ambassador Volker felt that there was this very good
story to tell about President Zelensky and a new chapter in Ukraine. And that
was his goal, was to hopefully take away some of that, what we sense was a negative
stream coming from Mr. Giuliani to the President."
Court
of public opinion
It remains unclear whether the new
details of the President's Ukraine timeline will do much to move public
opinion.
The inquiry moves to a new phase
next week with the Judiciary Committee, holding its first hearing on December
4, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has also extended an
invitation to Trump and his lawyers to participate in the probe. So far the
Trump administration's strategy has been to stonewall and not participate in
the process.
For now, Trump is trying to claim
victory after the two weeks of blockbuster testimony by pointing to a new CNN poll showing that 50%
of Americans believe that he should be impeached and removed, because that
figure was unchanged from mid-October when CNN asked the same question.
At his rally on Tuesday night, Trump
described Democrats leading the inquiry as "maniacs" who are
"pushing the deranged impeachment."
"The radical left Democrats are
trying to rip our nation apart," Trump said Tuesday night to boos at his
rally in Florida. "First it was the Russia hoax, total hoax. It was a
failed overthrow attempt and the biggest fraud in the history of our country
and then you look, the Mueller deal, you remember that mess? They had
nothing."
"Now the same maniacs are
pushing the deranged impeachment -- think of this: Impeachment. Impeachment. A
witch hunt. ... They're pushing that impeachment witch hunt and a lot of bad
things are happening to them. Because you see what's happening in the polls?
Everybody said, that's really bulls---," Trump said to cheers and
applause.
But beneath the steady topline poll
numbers on impeachment, there is strong evidence that the Ukraine matter has
eroded confidence in the President's motives -- and that many Americans have
heard enough to disapprove of his conduct.
While the views on impeachment and
removal did not change in the CNN poll released Tuesday, 53% of Americans said
Trump improperly used his office to gain political advantage, up from 49% who
said the same in October.
Moreover, 56% said the President's
efforts to get Ukraine to launch investigations into the Biden family, a
Ukrainian energy company and the 2016 election were intended to benefit him
rather than root out corruption in Ukraine.
The question looming over the 2020
election is whether the stain of impeachment could irreparably damage Trump and
cost him the White House.
It too early to draw conclusions,
but the ground he is standing on gets shakier each day as new revelations point
toward questionable conduct on his part.
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