The Government Accountability Office says the Trump administration broke the law when it withheld US security aid to Ukraine last year that had been appropriated by Congress — an issue at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, said in a decision issued Thursday that the White House budget office violated the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that limits the White House from withholding funds that Congress has appropriated.
The Office of Management and Budget told the GAO it “withheld the funds to ensure that they were not spent ‘in a manner that could conflict with the President’s foreign policy,’” said Thomas Armstrong, the GAO’s general counsel.
