There’s new reporting from the Washington Post tonight on President Donald Trump‘s call with the president of Ukraine and events that surrounded it.

Specifically, the Post reports, Trump ordered a hold on “$400 million in military aid for Ukraine” directly to Mick Mulvaney days before the call:

Officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) relayed Trump’s order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July, according to officials who spoke on the condition on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They explained that the president had “concerns” and wanted to analyze whether the money needed to be spent.

Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an “interagency process” but to give them no additional information — a pattern that continued for nearly two months, until the White House released the funds on the night of Sept. 11.

Senator Chris Murphy — who spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month — told the Post that Zelensky had “expressed concerns at their meeting that ‘the aid that was being cut off to Ukraine by the president was a consequence’ of his unwillingness to launch an investigation into the Bidens.”

A senior administration official said that Trump’s decision was over his concern about “a lot of corruption in Ukraine.”

Earlier today Trump himself said of the call, “It’s very important to talk about corruption. If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”

Amid questions about whether Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into the Bidens, Trump says this AM: "If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?" pic.twitter.com/9tEOEW5g1c

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 23, 2019

[image via Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images]

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2mdvFmw