Emails: Officials struggled with Ukraine aid freeze
WASHINGTON >> After President Donald Trump ordered a freeze in 2019 on security assistance to Ukraine, puzzled national security officials asked whether he was trying to “gain leverage” over its leaders in his dealings with the country, according to internal emails the Trump administration successfully fought to keep secret during his first impeachment.
The New York Times obtained the emails via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, fulfilling a request filed on Sept. 26, 2019 — two days after the House began the impeachment inquiry, and the day a whistleblower complaint became public accusing Trump of abusing his power to coerce Ukraine into announcing investigations that could aid his bid for reelection.
The newly available documents dovetail with the basic narrative of the Ukraine affair that emerged from Trump’s first impeachment. They also provided additional details.
The belated timing of their disclosure long after the impeachment ended with Trump’s acquittal by Senate Republicans, and after he lost reelection also shows how executive branch stonewalling can run out the clock on public records requests while the disclosure of documents would be most relevant to public debate.
The documents consist of 14 emails, email chains and attachments between Michael Duffey, then the top Office of Management and Budget official in charge of security assistance programs, and Robert Blair, then an aide to Trump’s acting chief of staff.
Duffey, who was fielding questions about the freeze from officials at other agencies, was struggling to understand both the scope of and the rationale for Trump’s directive, the emails show. Duffey repeatedly discussed the matter with Blair.
In the spring of 2019, the impeachment investigation later showed, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had already been lobbying President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. Giuliani was pressing Zelenskyy to announce a corruption investigation into Joe Biden, who was seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump in the general election, and into a baseless conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 election.
In late June 2019, after the Pentagon announced $250 million in assistance to Ukraine and Trump had asked for the details of the funding, Duffey wrote to Blair that a team had pulled together information in response but expressed confusion about what was going on, the documents show.
“We were not clear what direction to take this. Do you have any insight here?” Duffey wrote.
The files do not include any response from Blair. In addition, the federal judge who ordered the release of most of the emails sought by The Times, Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court in Washington, ruled that some were exempt from disclosure because they contained privileged communications involving Trump himself.
But by July 17, Duffey wrote again to Blair, saying officials at the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council wanted to know whether the freeze was limited to lethal support or applied to all security assistance and questioning its rationale.
The officials were asking, he wrote, “whether there is insight on motive or duration, such as an intent to gain leverage for an upcoming engagement with Ukrainian leadership. I understand there may be sensitivity behind much of this, but committed to see if I could get some insight beyond just the directive for a freeze.”
Blair replied curtly: “On Ukraine assistance, the president wants all security assistance frozen.”