Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/113

 Trump had blocked release of the military and security assistance. This was extremely unusual. OMB Deputy Associate Director Mark Sandy, the senior budget official responsible for the Department of Defense portion of the aid to Ukraine, testified that he could not recall another instance in which a significant amount of assistance was held with no rationale provided. Deputy Assistant George Kent testified that, upon learning of the hold on July 18, there was "great confusion" among representatives from the Department of Defense, State Department, and National Security Council because they "didn't understand why" the aid had been frozen.

If the President's reason for ordering a hold was concern about Europe's contributions, he had no reason to keep that fact a secret from his own administration. Moreover, if that was his concern, the normal response would be to undertake a review process at the time of the hold. Yet, while Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper and other witnesses testified that they received some inquiries in late June about Ukraine security assistance, Ms. Cooper testified that there was no policy or interagency review process that she "participated in or knew of" in August 2019. Ms. Cooper further testified that she had "no recollection of the issue of allied burden sharing coming up" in the three meetings she attended about the freeze on security assistance, or hearing about a lack of funding from Ukraine's allies as a reason for the freeze. Under Secretary of State David Hale also testified that he did not hear about the lack of funding from Ukraine's allies as a reason for the security assistance hold. And Ambassador Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, testified that he was never asked to reach out to European countries to get them to contribute more. Finally, President Trump ultimately released the military and security assistance without any further contributions from Europe. According to Lt. Col. Vindman, none of the "facts on the ground" had changed when this occurred.

If the President's concern were genuinely about burden-sharing, it is implausible that he kept his own administration in the dark about that issue, never made any public statements about it, never ordered a review process focused on the question of burden sharing, never ordered his officials to push Europe to increase their contribution, and then released the aid without any change in Europe's