According to the unredacted emails however, which Paoletta was clearly assuming would never see the light of day, that assertion isn‘t true at all. In “fact,” there are multiple examples of a Defense Department official flagging serious issues to the OMB, which the DOJ conveniently blacked out before releasing.

One such example would be the time, on August 27, when acting Defense Department comptroller Elaine McCusker emailed OMB official Michael Duffey and told him, “We have repeatedly advised OMB officials that pauses beyond Aug. 19, 2019 jeopardize the Department’s ability to obligate USAI funding prudently and fully, consistent with the Impoundment Control Act.” Another good one—obviously blacked out when the emails were released in December for public consumption—came on the same day, when Eric Chewning, chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, emailed McCusker after a defense contractor inquired about the hold, to which she responded: “This situation is really unworkable made particularly difficult because OMB lawyers continue to consistently mischaracterize the process—and the information we have provided.” And then there was the August 30 message, after Duffey met with Trump, in which he told McCusker that, despite the major concerns about the continued freeze on the aid, there was a “Clear direction from POTUS to hold.” Or the one Duffey sent to McCusker on September 9, in which he suggested that if and when the freeze was lifted, and the funding couldn’t be met—which the DOD had been warning could happen all summer—it would be the Defense Department’s fault. McCusker’s response? “You can’t be serious. I am speechless.” Naturally, that exchange was not included in the emails released by the government last month, after a court ordered them to be made available in response to a FOIA lawsuit from the Center for Public Integrity.

As you can probably imagine, Democrats are quite reasonably steamed up about the revelation that (1) Trump pushed for the freeze despite knowing the DOD believed it to be illegal, and (2) the Justice Department tried extremely hard to obscure this and other pertinent facts. “The newly-revealed unredacted emails are a devastating blow to Sen. McConnell’s push to have a trial without the documents and witnesses we’ve requested,” Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “These emails further expose the serious concerns raised by Trump administration officials about the propriety and legality of the president’s decision to cut off aid to Ukraine to benefit himself…. The American people deserve a fair trial that gets to the truth, not a rigged process that enables a cover-up.” McConnell does not yet appear to have responded to the news, but if we give him time surely he’ll come up with a new and inventive way to explain that the emails could show Trump repeatedly dunked the president of Ukraine’s head in a toilet shouting “I want my investigations, Zelensky!” and he’d still acquit the guy in less than day.

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