WASHINGTON -- New documents show President Donald Trump asked about U.S. military aid to Ukraine a month before the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that went on to trigger the impeachment investigation into Trump.
About 90 minutes after Trump held a telephone call with Zelenskiy in July, the White House budget office ordered the Pentagon to suspend all military aid that Congress had allocated to Ukraine, according to emails released late Friday by the Pentagon.
A budget official, Michael Duffey, also told the Pentagon to keep quiet about the aid freeze because of the "sensitive nature of the request," according to a message dated July 25.
An earlier email that Duffey sent to the Pentagon comptroller suggested that Trump began asking aides about $250 million in military aid set aside for Ukraine after noticing a June 19 article about it in the Washington Examiner.
In a June 19 email, Duffey asked Elaine McCusker, the Pentagon comptroller, about the aid in the context of the Washington Examiner article, saying, "The President has asked about this funding release, and I have been tasked to follow-up with someone over there to get more detail."
According to the private testimony of Mark Sandy, a senior budget official, Trump began inquiring about the aid on June 19 after seeing the news report. Sandy said in a private deposition before lawmakers in November that he learned of Trump's decision to freeze the aid through a July 12 email from Robert Blair, an aide to Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.
The budget office initially blocked the State Department's $141 million portion of the aid package on July 3.
The emails add to public understanding of the events that prompted the Democratic-led House to call for Trump to be removed from office. On Wednesday, Trump was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress along a party-line vote after documents and testimony by senior administration officials revealed that he had withheld $391 million in aid to Ukraine at the same time that he asked for investigations from the Ukrainian president that would benefit him politically.
The emails were in a batch of 146 pages of documents released to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization and watchdog group, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, has pressed for Duffey, a political appointee who is associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget, to testify in a Senate trial. Saturday on Twitter, he pointed to the July 25 email as "all the more reason" Duffey and others must appear.
Schumer met Thursday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to discuss the terms of a trial. The meeting ended in an impasse before Congress broke for the holidays.
Schumer "made clear to Sen. McConnell that the witnesses and documents are necessary to ensure a fair trial in the Senate," spokesman Justin Goodman said. McConnell has been pushing for a process that likely won't include any witnesses.
The other officials Schumer has requested are Mulvaney, Blair and John Bolton, the former national security adviser who left the administration in September.
In the call, after Zelenskiy mentioned Ukraine was ready to buy anti-tank missiles to use in a war against a Russia-backed insurgency, Trump said, "I would like you to do us a favor though," according to a reconstructed transcript released by the White House. He then pressed Zelenskiy to open an investigation based on a conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections and one based on unsubstantiated claims of corrupt acts by former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate.
That call took place from 9:03 a.m. to 9:33 a.m. EDT. At 11:04 a.m., Duffey emailed Defense Department officials telling them of the aid, "Please hold off on any additional [Defense Department] obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process." Obligation refers to the process of a government agency designating how funds will be spent.
In addition, he wrote, "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."
The budget office declined to comment Saturday, and the Pentagon did not reply to a request for comment.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to publicly discuss the matter, said the timing of the email -- an hour and a half after Trump's July 25 call with Zelenskiy -- was coincidental.
The official said the email was part of a weekslong exchange over aid to Ukraine. The July 25 email came after the budget office issued a formal, written hold on the aid, the official said. The reference to sensitivity around the discussions, the official said, was based on the potential for concerns about career officials at the agency that had arisen from previous instances when aid had been cut.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Saturday on Twitter that the new documents show that the internal notes reveal Trump's "direct involvement" in the matter.
Murphy later seemed to concede that the documents, while important, were just the latest piece of evidence in a monthslong inquiry spearheaded by House Democrats that still seems certain to end in Trump's acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate in early 2020.
"Frankly it's just the 77th piece of evidence confirming the same thing," Murphy said in a Twitter reply to Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
The House on Wednesday adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump. The votes won the support of almost all Democrats in the House chamber but not a single Republican.
On Saturday, Trump complained about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's delayed transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate, which may delay a trial in the chamber.
"It's so unfair," Trump said as he spoke at a conservative student conference organized by the group Turning Point USA. "They are violating the Constitution," he added.
Pelosi has refused so far to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, in part to provide more leverage to Democrats in that chamber as they seek to negotiate the rules for the trial proceedings.
Trump lashed out at the Democrats who supported impeachment, accusing them of trying to "overthrow" the 2016 election.
"They call themselves Democrats, but they really don't believe in democracy," he said.
Trump lauded House Republicans for remaining in lockstep against impeachment as a few Democrats crossed the aisle to oppose it.
Trump spoke on the first day of his more than two-week winter vacation at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Information for this article was contributed by Edward Wong of The New York Times; by Daniel Flatley of Bloomberg News; and by Zeke Miller of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/22/2019