Did you know that there is a federal watchdog group that holds the government accountable? I didn’t either. But apparently, the Government Accountability Office has put a ring (and by “ring,” I mean handcuffs) on it and made it official: Trump broke the law when he withheld congressionally-approved aid to Ukraine last year.
According to CNN, the GAO found Thursday that the White House budget office “violated the Impoundment Control Act, which says that funds appropriated by Congress cannot be withheld by the White House.”
“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA,” the GAO said, CNN notes.
And while we are on an acronym kick, I would like to add that the NFL violated BLM and MLK.
CNN notes that the president was in his Vladimir Putin dictatorship bag back in July 2019 when he placed a hold on Ukraine aid in a quid pro quo effort that included releasing Ukraine’s money only after they announced an investigation into political rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Government agencies were notified at a July 18 meeting that Ukraine’s aid had been frozen at the direction of the president, “a week before a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which later became the reason an impeachment inquiry was launched into the President,” CNN reports.