LETTER: The GAO and aid to Ukraine
January 28, 2020 - 9:00 pm
A recent letter (“Arrogant complicity,” Sunday) excoriated President Donald Trump and claimed, “There was, in fact, a crime committed by the president. An independent federal office has confirmed this.” The office was the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO reviewed and issued a nine-page legal opinion on the “pause” of Ukraine military aid, writing that the Office of Management and Budget and, by extension, President Trump, violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
But, as a law professor from George Washington University has noted, if the president broke the law, then the GAO comptroller general did also by not notifying Congress.
That’s a fact that the GAO omitted.