US official questioned over withheld money in impeachment probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Impeachment investigators met on Saturday with a White House official directly connected to US President Donald Trump’s block on military aid to Ukraine, the first budget office witness to testify in the historic inquiry.

In a rare weekend session, lawmakers drilled into Trump’s decision — against the advice of national security advisers, including John Bolton — to withhold funding from the ally, a young democracy bordering hostile Russia.

It is a sign of a deepening of the constitutional showdown, bookended by public hearings this week and next, that is testing the system of checks and balances in the US government.

“It seems clear to me from everything that I’ve seen that the president had no interest in the defense of Ukraine and the security of the Ukrainian people,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, during a break in the closed-door proceedings.

Raskin said it is important for lawmakers “to trace the bureaucratic steps” that allowed money Congress had already approved to be upheld by the executive branch. “We’re in the process of chasing that down.”

The witness Saturday was Mark Sandy, a little known career official at the Office of Management and Budget who was involved in key meetings about the nearly $400million aid package Congress had already approved for Ukraine.

Sandy’s name has barely come up in previous testimony. But it did on one particular date: July 25, the day of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the core of the impeachment probe.