President Donald Trump has made attacking the whistle-blower a central part of his anti-impeachment defense—and apparently, the president has had a long time to stew over the anonymous official's concerns. The New York Times reports that Trump found out about the whistle-blower, who first raised objections to the president's dealings with Ukraine, back in late August, weeks before the complaint was first reported in the press. (Trump, unsurprisingly, decried that report as “fake news.”) White House lawyers reportedly informed Trump about the complaint, and explained that they were currently attempting to determine whether they were legally compelled to turn it over to Congress, or if it could be withheld because of executive privilege. (It was eventually delivered to Congress on September 25.)

Trump's August knowledge about the whistle-blower complaint sheds new light on the possible motivations behind some of the key events in the whole Ukraine saga—namely the fact that Trump knew about the whistle-blower when foreign aid to Ukraine was eventually released on September 11, after previously being held up by Trump for unknown reasons. Republicans have pointed to the aid's eventual release as a key defense against impeachment, saying that there couldn't have been a quid pro quo plot if the White House ultimately gave Ukraine the funds without a public declaration that Ukraine would investigate the president's rivals. The fact that Trump was well aware that his dealings with Ukraine were about to get him into trouble pokes a hole in this defense, instead playing into House Democrats' theory that the president was acting not out of benevolence to Ukraine, but rather as a way to save himself amid mounting concerns. (The whistle-blower wasn't the only one raising alarms about Ukraine at the time; three House committees opened an investigation into Trump's Ukraine dealings on September 9.)

This also means that Trump was aware of the whistle-blower's allegations when the president started vehemently denying the existence of a quid pro in conversations with his allies—and once again calls into question the motivation behind those statements. Just days after the president learned of the whistle-blower complaint, the Times reports, Trump denied extorting Ukraine in a conversation with Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. Johnson asked Trump “whether there was some kind of arrangement where Ukraine would take some action and the hold would be lifted,” the senator wrote in a letter to House investigators, and Trump responded, “(Expletive deleted)—No way. I would never do that. Who told you that?” Trump then made a similar denial in an early September phone call with Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. “He was not in a good mood. And he just said I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing,” Sondland testified Wednesday. “Something to that effect.”

In addition to the Times report, the House Intelligence Committee released a transcript of closed-door testimony from Office of Management and Budget official Mark Sandy Tuesday, which sheds additional light on the holdup of aid to Ukraine at the heart of the impeachment investigation. Sandy testified that the White House agency was told to hold the aid by Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney at Trump's direction, and the first official White House action to hold the funds was taken hours after Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. No reason was given was at the time for holding up the aid, though the Trump administration would later claim in early September—after Trump knew about the whistle-blower—that it was due to Trump's “concern about other countries not contributing more to Ukraine.” (In a statement, the House Intelligence Committee wrote that other known facts about impeachment suggest “this justification was concocted as an after-the-fact rationalization to justify the hold.”) But the hold on the aid certainly had an impact at OMB, even spurring the resignation of two officials. After Sandy, a career official, raised concerns about the aid being withheld to his superior, political appointee Michael Duffey, Duffey took control of the responsibility for signing off on the documents holding up the money—apparently, Sandy testified, because “there was interest among the leadership in tracking the issues of moneys closely.”