Thread by @ReginaldOhLaw

There's a huge hole in Trump's defense that he withheld Ukraine aid because of corruption.

Problem?

If it was truly about corruption, his *only* legal option was to seek to *CANCEL* the aid, not temporarily withhold it.

His defense proves the illegality of the hold.

Thread

Trump's central defense for "temporarily" withholding aid to Ukraine has been his supposed concern about Ukrainian corruption.

And, once his concerns about corruption were met, he immediately released the aid.

Thus, Trump defenders contend that, because he had a legitimate policy reason, temporarily withholding the aid was appropriate.

Trump's defenders emphasize he only put a brief "pause' on the release of aid.

The problem with that defense is the Impoundment Control Act.

Under the Act, if the president has a policy concern about disbursing Congressionally appropriated funds, he has only one legal recourse: To inform Congress that he wants to RESCIND the appropriated funds.

And by rescind, it means exactly what it sounds like: the funds would be cancelled entirely, not just "paused."

He had no legal authority to temporarily put a "hold" or "pause" on the funds if his reason was based on policy.

Why not? Because of Richard Nixon.

Nixon would routinely abuse his powers by refusing to spend Congressionally appropriated funds based on policy grounds.

So, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act to strictly regulate if and how the president can refuse to obligate or spend funds on policy grounds.

The ICA states that, if the president has a "fiscal policy" concern regarding appropriated funds, he has only one option:

To seek what's called a "rescission" or a cancellation of those funds. And that's the only option.

The ICA does give the president the power to temporarily withhold funds, but ONLY for non-policy, budgetary reasons.

A temporary hold is called a deferral, and the ICA states that he can seek a deferral for only 3 reasons: 1) to provide for [budgetary] contingencies; 2) to achieve savings; 3) as provided by law.

Because Trump explicitly states he had a *policy* reason for withholding aid (corruption), he legally could not have sought a deferral or temporary hold.

In other words, his so called legitimate reason for the hold is precisely what makes the "pause" illegal or unauthorized.

If he was truly concerned about corruption, he had just one recourse under the ICA: To seek a rescission, not a deferral. I.e., to seek to cancel the entire aid package.

The implications of this analysis are important.

This means that Trump's policy reason, corruption, even if it were true, still doesn’t make the hold legal. In fact, it makes the hold patently illegal.

So, if Trump cared about corruption and that's the actual reason he withheld aid, he would have and should have sought a rescission, and informed Congress of that decision as required by the ICA.

Trump and his aides knew this.

One may wonder, if he truly cared about corruption, why didn't he go through the legal channels and seek a rescission?

For one thing, that would have created a political firestorm. Seeking to cancel aid to Ukraine would have raised bipartisan confusion and outrage.

But, of course, the truth is that the hold was never about Ukraine corruption. It was about an illicit goal to smear Biden to further his re-election chances.

And informing Congress of his wish to rescind the aid would have made it impossible for him to use the withheld aid as leverage to coerce Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden.

Bottom line, the Ukraine corruption rationale actually undermines rather than support his claim that his "pause" of the aid was appropriate.

In fact, it does the exact opposite. It actually proves that his "pause" was illegal.

So, Trump is going around raising a defense that thoroughly undermines his claim about the legitimacy of the hold.

The corruption argument is the emperor without any clothes. And he needs to be called on it.

End