For months on end the liberal left have been attempting to impeach and removed President Donald J. Trump from office.
Whether they would like to admit it or not, the RussiaGate investigation and subsequent Mueller report were thinly-veiled attempts to conjure high crimes and misdemeanors in hopes of getting the ball rolling on impeachment early. When this fizzled out at the hands of Mueller himself, the left moved onto to an anonymous whistleblower complaint about a phone call with Ukraine.
This latest scandal revolves around the allegation that Trump withheld crucial foreign aid to Ukraine while awaiting the announcement of an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Many of the President’s defenders have attempted to paint a picture in which no one could say why the aid was held up, let alone pinning that decision on the Commander in Chief himself.
Now, that narrative has been blown out of the water.
In the face of warnings from the Pentagon that the hold on military aid to Ukraine could be illegal, an official from the Office of Management and Budget made it clear that the order to keep the freeze in place came directly from President Donald Trump, according to unredacted documents reviewed by Just Security.
The documents, including emails from officials at the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget that were released under court order last month but were either partially or completely blacked out, offer new details about tensions between the two agencies tasked with carrying out Trump’s unexplained hold on aid to Ukraine.
They also raise serious questions about why the newly revealed contents were redacted by the Trump administration in the first place amid congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act litigation.
“These redactions at least raise eyebrows. The categories that the Freedom of Information Act allows the government to withhold are sufficiently vague that it’s hard to say whether these redactions were actually in violation of that law,” said Josh Geltzer, executive director and visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.
Will this spell trouble for Donald Trump, especially after a number of Republican Senators expressed doubt about the leadership of Mitch McConnell in the coming Senate trial, or will the President simply deflect and defend himself yet again?
Only time will tell…
