Acting OMB Director Russell Vought tweeted Oct. 21 that neither he nor Michael P. Duffey, OMB’s associate director for national security programs, would show up for closed-door depositions. The two were subpoenaed on Friday. Last month, two House committees wrote to OMB seeking information on the withholding of foreign aid to Ukraine and other State Department accounts, and related documents called apportionments that would show decisions about the timing of expenditures. OMB has provided some of the information, but it hasn’t been made public.

In the July 25 phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry, Trump urged Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to “look into” the actions of former Vice President Joe Biden, who at one point said he helped orchestrate the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had been widely criticized. Biden’s son Hunter served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company that had been under investigation. Trump has denied he withheld aid in exchange for a probe of the Bidens.

Nevertheless, beginning in July, OMB put a hold on $391.5 million in foreign aid to Ukraine at Trump’s request. That included $250 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative run through the Defense Department, and $141.5 million in Foreign Military Financing overseen by the State Department.

The budget office did not release the aid until mid-September.

Putting the pieces together

Trump later said he froze the aid because of concerns about corruption in Ukraine and that European allies were not contributing their fair share to the country’s aid. The former Soviet satellite has been a leading recipient of U.S. assistance since it declared independence in 1991, and aid increased after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Pentagon told Congress in late February that Ukraine had met conditions to receive the initial batch of fiscal 2019 security assistance, and followed up in late May confirming the remaining amount. Two months later, on July 18, OMB placed a verbal hold on that $250 million as well as $141.5 million in Foreign Military Financing funds. The hold was formalized a week later, the same day as the phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy that triggered the impeachment inquiry.