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By Aaron Blake
Jan. 16, 2020 at 9:02 a.m. MST

www_washingtonpost_com/politics/2020/01/16/gao-severely-rebukes-trumps-ukraine-ploy-undermines-his-no-crime-defense/

The GOP has made the idea there was no crime a central argument in its impeachment defense of President Trump. The articles of impeachment, Republicans argue, don’t actually accuse Trump of a specific, statutory criminal act, so the process is illegitimate.
This, of course, ignores that you don’t need a crime to impeach. But that strained argument was just severely undermined.
The Government Accountability Office ruled Thursday the Trump administration’s withholding of aid to Ukraine violated the law, because Trump can’t use his policy priorities to supersede the constitutional power of the purse that Congress enjoys.
If Congress appropriates the money, essentially, Trump needs to have a very specific reason for withholding it, and the reasons supplied didn’t qualify.
In a nine-page report, GAO general counsel Thomas H. Armstrong delivers rebukes to Trump and his administration, saying it has failed to abide by the law, failed to substantiate its actions and failed to cooperate by providing the necessary documentation.
The GAO report specifically refers to $214 million in funds for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — it hasn’t reached a conclusion on an additional $26.5 million in foreign military financing that was withheld — that was delayed via footnotes. It says the footnotes, which said the funds were withheld to make sure they were not spent “in a manner that could conflict with the President’s foreign policy,” don’t satisfy the requirement for overriding Congress’s appropriation of funds.
“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the report begins. The Office of Management and Budget “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.”