The Trump administration escalated its stonewalling of Congress on Friday.
"The Trump administration disclosed on Friday that there were 20 emails between a top aide to President Trump’s acting chief of staff and a colleague at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget discussing the freeze of a congressionally mandated military aid package for Ukraine," The New York Timesreported Friday.
"But in response to a court order that it swiftly process those pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, lawsuit filed by The New York Times, the Office of Management and Budget delivered a terse letter saying it would not turn over any of the 40 pages of emails — not even with redactions," the newspaper reported.
Dionne Hardy, the OMB's Freedom of Information Act officer, wrote, "All 20 documents are being withheld in full."
"The Times’s information act request sought email messages between Robert Blair, a top aide to Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and Michael Duffey, an official in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget who was in charge of handling the process for releasing $391 million in weapons and security assistance Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression," the newspaper noted.
The move is a major escalation.
"The Trump administration’s move to withhold all the emails in full — not even disclosing the dates they were sent, or the shape of paragraphs covered by black lines — is a step beyond its heavy censorship of a related set of emails it released in response to another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Center for Public Integrity," The Times noted.