WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration disclosed on Friday that there were 20 emails between a top aide to President Donald Trump's acting chief of staff and a colleague at the White House's Office of Management and Budget discussing the freeze of a congressionally mandated military aid package
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration disclosed on Friday that there were 20 emails between a top aide to President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff and a colleague at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget discussing the freeze of a congressionally mandated military aid package for Ukraine.
The Times’ information act request sought email messages between Robert Blair, a top aide to Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and Michael Duffey, an official in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget who was in charge of handling the process for releasing $391 million in weapons and security assistance Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression.
The heart of the accusation against Trump is that he abused his official powers, including withholding a promised White House meeting and congressionally mandated military aid, in an attempt to coerce Ukraine’s president into announcing investigations that could deliver personal political benefits to Trump.
The Trump administration’s move to withhold all the emails in full — not even disclosing the dates they were sent, or the shape of paragraphs covered by black lines — is a step beyond its heavy censorship of a related set of emails it released in response to another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Center for Public Integrity.
The Times separately reported this week that Blair warned Mulvaney to “expect Congress to become unhinged” if the White House went ahead with the hold on the aid.
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