Over the Cliff Notes.
(Sandy has been Deputy Associate Director for National Security Programs at the OMB since 2013, and Navy Reserve for 21 years.)
Spoiler: First Trump broke the law. When he was about to get caught, he looked for an excuse for having done it.
June 19: Trump saw a media report and asked for a description of the security aid program.
The OMB prepared one for him, and sent it the next day.
Sandy went on leave for two weeks, and returned on July 18 to learn that the president placed a hold on the security assistance.
[Notice that this is before the Zelensky-Trump call in which Trump asked for a “favor.”]
Sandy asked for more explanation about the hold. His supervisor Duffy (Trump’s appointee) didn’t know why the aid was on hold.
Sandy was responsible for preparing an apportionment (a legally binding document holding the funds).
Sandy explained to Duffy that some legal questions needed to be addressed.
Sandy alerted the OMB’s general counsel’s office because of potential violation of the Impound Control Act.
[Narrator: We can learn about the Compound Control Act here. }
[Clearly Trump’s hold violated this law.]
[Narrator: Trump said once that “our laws are all stupid and corrupt.” I’ve argued that he hates regulations and regulatory agencies (the “Deep State”) because these regs stand in the way of him doing whatever he pleases. For more on that, click here]
For months Sandy and his colleagues tried to learn the reason for the hold.
He cannot recall another time a significant amount of funding was held up without rationale.
Two colleagues, including someone in the OMB general counsel’s office resigned. Both resigned at least in part because of concerns that the hold violated the Impound Act.
Sandy helped prepare a memo arguing for the release of the funds because the security aid was consistent with US national security interests.
We know from NY Times reporting that Trump learned about the whistleblower complaint in late August.
In early September, Sandy received requests from the White House for information about what other countries had contributed to Ukraine’s security.
A member of Sandy’s staff responded to the request (multiple other countries are providing various types of assistance to Ukraine).
After the lifting of the hold on September 12, the DOD was unable to fully obligate USAI funds before the end of the fiscal year. About 35 million remained unpaid. (Congress had to pass legislation to allow the remainder to be paid)
One of the GOP defenses is that Trump withheld the security aid because he wanted to make sure other countries were also providing aid.
This timeline pretty much obliterates that defense.
Another GOP defense is that nobody ever heard Trump specifically say that withholding security aid was linked to any attempt on his part to pressure Ukraine into opening the investigation into Burisma /Biden.
We don’t need signed confessions to infer, from circumstantial evidence, exactly what happened.
For more on how that works, see my latest NBC Opinion piece.
When Trump supporters pretend they don’t know about circumstantial evidence, they’re playing dumb. Anyone who reads detective novels knows about circumstantial evidence
One thing that went wrong for Trump is that Operation Ukraine Shakedown required lots of career employees getting whiff of what was happening.
While lots of them were bullied into silence, others are willing to speak.
It also seems that Trump is getting bad legal advice. His lawyers talk about made-up doctrines like “absolute immunity.”
They also argue that the president, as head of the executive branch, can run the branch anyway he wants. So Trump does whatever he wants.
In this case, he violated the Impound Control Act as part of his attempt to pressure Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Biden.
That Trump broke laws as part of Operation Ukrainian Shakedown will strengthen the Articles of Impeachment. Senators who acquit have to say, “Yes! The president can break any law he pleases while leveraging government to benefit himself.”
It sort of puts them on the spot.
If the president can disregard laws passed by Congress based on a whim—even if the whim is arguably valid grounds for concern—we create what the drafters of the Constitution called a tyrant: A leader above the law.
The drafters of the Constitution specifically guarded against that.
This should be easy.
Precisely.
And Trump didn’t provide a justification, or apparently even try to find one, until after he learned about the Whistleblower’s report.
It’s elementary, my dear Watson.
