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Pres. Trump Cries ‘Bullsh*t’ As New Details Reported On Ukraine Aid Freeze – Day That Was | MSNBC

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The impeachment fight over Ukraine is about to leave the depositions and head straight into the House Judiciary Committee.

President Trump spent Tuesday publicly fuming as new reporting tightened the timeline connecting his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the nearly $400 million in frozen military aid. With the House Judiciary Committee set to begin drafting and debating articles of impeachment on December 4, the president dismissed the entire inquiry as “bullshit” even as fresh documents and testimony piled up against his administration’s version of events.

• The New York Times reported Trump had already been briefed by White House counsel in late August about the anonymous whistleblower complaint before he released $391 million in frozen military assistance to Ukraine on September 11.
• Career OMB official Mark Sandy testified that the formal directive to hold $250 million in Pentagon aid was executed the evening of July 25 — hours after Trump’s call urging Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
• The House Judiciary Committee announced it will begin drafting and debating articles of impeachment on December 4.

The Timeline Problem

The administration’s defense has rested on the claim that the aid freeze had nothing to do with the whistleblower complaint or the congressional investigations three House committees launched on September 9. The Times’ reporting undercuts that argument directly: if Trump knew about the complaint in late August and still didn’t release the aid until September 11 — two days after lawmakers opened their probes — the sequence looks far less like routine policy review and far more like a freeze that only broke once Congress started asking questions.

A Paper Trail Back to the White House

Newly released closed-door deposition transcripts and House Budget Committee summaries filled in the mechanics of how the hold actually happened. Mark Sandy’s testimony placed the initial order to freeze the $250 million in Pentagon assistance on the night of July 25 — the same day Trump pressed Zelensky on the phone to dig into the Bidens. That timing is the crux of the entire case Democrats are building, and it’s why Republicans have struggled to explain the freeze as anything other than connected to the call.

Trump dismissed the accusations of improper leverage or misconduct as “bullshit” during his public remarks defending the aid freeze.

Trump’s Response

Rather than engage the substance of Sandy’s deposition or the Times’ timeline, Trump went on the offensive in campaign-style remarks, repeatedly attacking the inquiry itself and rejecting any suggestion he used the aid as leverage over Zelensky’s government. It’s the same posture he’s taken throughout the standoff over Ukraine, a conflict already covered extensively as tensions between Washington, Kyiv and Moscow have escalated in prior reporting on why this moment has been described as critical for the US and Russia over Ukraine.

Democrats, meanwhile, argue the Sandy testimony and the Times report together close the loop the White House had hoped to keep open — that the freeze was a policy decision unrelated to the Bidens, whose ties to Ukraine and China have separately fueled scrutiny of Joe Biden’s own political operation throughout the 2020 cycle.

December 4 is now the date to watch. That’s when the Judiciary Committee starts drafting the actual articles of impeachment, moving the fight from depositions and transcripts into language that could ultimately go to a House floor vote — and Trump’s “bullshit” defense will need to hold up against a paper trail that keeps getting longer.