Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday said the emails released this weekend showing a White House official telling the Pentagon to freeze aid to Ukraine just two hours after President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke is proof that White House witnesses are necessary the Senate impeachment trial.
“Michael Duffey sent an email ordering military assistance to Ukraine be withheld. If there was ever an argument that we need Duffey and others to testify & we need the documents we requested — this is it. This email is explosive,” Schumer tweeted along with a photo of the email from OMB’s Michael Duffy to Secretary of Defense David Norquist on July 25.
“If there is nothing wrong with withholding the aid, why didn’t Michael Duffey want anyone to know about what he was doing?” Schumer added. “If the call was so perfect, why is the email so “sensitive” that it should be kept hush-hush? What are they afraid of?”
“From whom did Michael Duffey get the order and why did he do it?” he said in another tweet. “Was it directly from President Trump? Was it Mick Mulvaney? Until we hear from him and the witnesses we requested, Americans will be left to assume those blocking their testimony are aiding & abetting a cover-up.”
The Center for Public Integrity released 146 pages of emails it received through a Freedom of Information Act request and court order including redacted conversations between the Pentagon and the White House Office of Management and Budget about the aid to Ukraine.