On the morning that House Democrats finally sent the Senate their articles of impeachment, the Government Accountability Office announced that the Office of Budget and Management did indeed violate the law in listening to President Trump’s decision to withhold $400 million in congressionally approved aid to Ukraine.
The GAO’s conclusion does undermine one of the defenses Trump has routinely touted. Contrary to his continued assertions, withholding the aid — even though almost all of it was released before it timed out — was not a lawful use of presidential powers. But that defense has always been immaterial to the charge at the core of the impeachment case against him: whether or not he used a presidential power, lawfully or unlawfully, with the intention of benefiting himself politically, at the expense of the common good.
“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO report states. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”
As a matter of principle, this reflects poorly on Trump. But this conclusion was legally inevitable. It’s also irrelevant to the impeachment trial, which will be focused on why there had been a policy change. If Trump had withheld the aid because Ukraine actually was acting in a corrupt fashion — which, again, there is no evidence of this — then that still would have violated the ICA because it reflected a policy change from Congress’s position. But it wouldn’t have been an abuse of power, the central question of impeachment.
After all, the GAO found President Barack Obama’s Pentagon in violation of the law, thanks to the Bowe Bergdahl swap. Republicans rightly excoriated Obama for spending nearly $1 million to exchange five Taliban commanders (including at least one UN-wanted war criminal) for the disgraced deserter without giving Congress a month’s notice. As the GAO found, the move violated the 2014 Defense Appropriations Act and the Antideficiency Act.
But no serious arguments were made to initiate an impeachment investigation against Obama, nor should they have been made.
That the GAO conclusion won’t determine the impeachment verdict doesn’t make it any less disgraceful. But leftists cheering themselves for finally finding their silver bullet to impeach Trump are simply mistaken.
