The U.S. federal government's auditing agency has concluded that the White House Office of Management and Budget violated the law when it withheld aid to Ukraine in the summer of 2019, according to a decision issued today.
The Government Accountability Office said OMB's reasoning for withholding the aid — "to ensure that they were not spent 'in a manner that could conflict with the President's foreign policy'" — is not allowed.
"The law does not permit OMB to withhold funds for policy reasons," GAO General Counsel Thomas Armstrong said in a statement.