"President Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call..."

"... in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden, according to three senior administration officials. Officials at the Office of Management and Budget relayed Trump’s order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They explained that the president had 'concerns' and wanted to analyze whether the money needed to be spent.... Trump’s order to withhold aid to Ukraine a week before his July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky is likely to raise questions about the motivation for his decision and fuel suspicions on Capitol Hill that Trump sought to leverage congressionally approved aid to damage a political rival."

WaPo reports.

Three senior administration officials.

One reason I have difficulty taking the cue to feel suspicious that "Trump sought to leverage congressionally approved aid to damage a political rival" is that I think Joe Biden is Trump's weakest rival and that Trump should prefer that Biden get through and become the candidate, not help knock him out of contention and give more formidable rivals a better shot. My hypothesis has been that Democrats wanted to forefront the problem with Biden and Ukraine to push him out of the race, because they can see that he'll be a terrible nominee and his poll numbers have stubbornly held strong. But I see his numbers remain strong, even with all the damaging news about him and Ukraine.

ADDED: I wrote "My hypothesis has been that Democrats wanted to forefront the problem with Biden," so let me show you were I said that. On September 21,  I wrote: "For me, this reinforces the suspicion I aired yesterday, that the real motivation for surfacing this story now is to push Biden out." That links what I said on the 20th: "Is there some idea that this is the issue that will be used in the future against Biden and that it ought to come out now?"

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