WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government's watchdog agency said Thursday a White House office violated federal law in withholding security assistance to Ukraine.
The Government Accountability Office said in a report that the Office of Management and Budget violated the law in holding up the aid. The freeze is at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The independent agency, which reports to Congress, said OMB violated the Impoundment Control Act in delaying the security assistance Congress authorized for Ukraine for “policy reasons,” rather than technical budgetary needs.
“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” wrote the agency's general counsel, Thomas Armstrong, in the report.
OMB has argued the hold was appropriate and necessary.
“We disagree with GAO's opinion. OMB uses its apportionment authority to ensure taxpayer dollars are properly spent consistent with the President's priorities and with the law," said OMB spokeswoman Rachel Semmel.
Trump was impeached last month on charges of abusing his power for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Democratic rivals, as he was withholding the aid, and for obstructing Congress' ensuing probe. The Senate is set to begin its trial on Thursday.
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Nate Boyer, a former NFL player and Green Beret, is the man behind Colin Kaepernick's protests in 2016 when he suggested that the quarterback kneel instead of sit during the National Anthem as a sign of a respect. Two years later, Boyer believes people are missing the point of his protest and not listening to both sides of the issue.
Comedian Erin Gibson said that she believes Louis C.K.'s return to comedy is not welcome and hasn't been earned. Gibson believes retribution is necessary in order to re-enter the comedy space.
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Lance Ulanoff, tech and social media expert, and Ian Sherr, executive editor of CNET News, agreed that Google's decision to not send a top executive to testify to Congress alongside Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey is going to cause significant damage among lawmakers for the company.
Whichever "senior official" wrote the unsigned New York Times op-ed slamming President Trump should come out of the shadows and resign, said Marc Lotter, former press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence.
The New York Times published a scathing Op-Ed written by an unidentified senior official in the Trump administration, setting off a firestorm of speculation about who the insider is. The writer said he and others in the White House were part of “a quiet resistance” to keep the president in check.
John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who first exposed the fraud at blood-testing company Theranos, said the former CEO of the once high-flying start-up had a chance to minimize the pain years ago, but instead used what money the company had to hide the truth.
The activist, diversity consultant, and author is unsure if tech executives like Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey are equipped to fix platforms that they in part helped create and which, at least in the case of Twitter, might be fundamentally broken.
Well, that happened.
Far-right conspiracy theorist and verbal bomb-thrower Alex Jones crashed both the Senate and House hearings on big tech Wednesday, commandeering media attention and at one point nearly getting into an altercation with Sen. Marco Rubio.
Jones told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin that he was there to "face my accusers." Jones, who founded the conspiracy site InfoWars, was booted off Facebook and YouTube for peddling hate speech, though he remains active on Twitter.
