U.S. OFFICIAL ORDERED HOLD ON AID TO UKRAINE.
Email sent hours after Trump’s phone call
WASHINGTON • An official from the White House budget office directed the Defence Department to “hold off” on sending military aid to Ukraine less than two hours after President Donald Trump’s controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to internal emails.
Michael Duffey, a senior budget official, told Pentagon officials that Trump had become personally interested in the Ukraine aid and had ordered the hold, according to the heavily redacted emails, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity on Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. He also asked the Pentagon not to discuss the hold widely.
“Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction,” Duffey wrote in a July 25 email to Pentagon Comptroller Elaine Mccusker and others.
The new emails shed light on the opaque and unorthodox process by which the Trump administration withheld almost US$400 million in aid from Ukraine at the same time the president and some of his political allies were pushing Zelensky to investigate Democrats. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, charging the president with leveraging U.S. military aid to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election and blocking congressional attempts to conduct oversight.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In one of the emails, Duffey indicated Trump began asking about the aid Congress had appropriated for Ukraine after seeing a June 19 article in the Washington Examiner with the headline “Pentagon to send US$250M in weapons to Ukraine.”
The haphazard process continued throughout the summer, the emails show, including on the same day that Trump spoke with Zelensky and requested a “favour” after the Ukrainian president said he was ready to purchase anti-tank missiles from the United States. That phone call, which took place at about 9 a.m. on July 25, was followed by Duffey’s email directing the hold at 11:04 a.m.
The aid was eventually released in September, after a whistleblower came forward to allege that Trump had pressured Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by launching investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as into a conspiracy theory about Ukrainian election interference in 2016.