Of the many defenses Donald Trump’s allies have tried to make stick concerning his attempt to extort Ukraine, one most oft-repeated is that the hold on nearly $400 million in military aid in exchange for investigations doesn’t matter because the aid was ultimately released. One problem there is that the aid was conveniently only released the day after Representative Adam Schiff sent a letter regarding the existence of the whistle-blower complaint, suggesting it might’ve remained in limbo if no one had raised a stink. Another problem? Internal emails show that the White House scrambled to come up with a justification for freezing the money just days after the White House Counsel’s Office was told that an anonymous CIA official had filed a complaint with the agency’s general counsel concerning the president’s July 25 phone call, suggesting people on the inside knew they were fucked.

The Washington Post reports that a confidential White House review of Trump’s decision to put a hold on aid to Ukraine “has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal.” In early August, for example, email exchanges show acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney asking acting Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought to provide an update on the legal rationale for holding up the aid and how much longer it could be delayed. (The month prior, the president had decided to freeze the money “without an assessment of the reasoning or legal justification,” because when you’re pressuring another country to do your personal bidding, you don’t typically ask, Hey, this is cool legally-speaking, right?) Emails show Vought and OMB staffers insisting the hold was legal, while officials at the State Department and National Security Council believed otherwise. According to the justification from the OMB lawyers, withholding the aid was legal so long as they referred to it as a “temporary” hold, according to people familiar with the matter.