- Mark Esper says he repeatedly tried to warn Trump against withholding aid to Ukraine.
- Trump's defense secretary writes in a new book that Trump questioned why the US needed to help Ukraine.
- Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine.
Former Defense secretary Mark Esper claims that he warned President Donald Trump that withholding military aid to Ukraine was both illegal and that it would further weaken Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government.
"I ran through a series of arguments that failed time and time again: deterrence of Russian aggression; showing Moscow our commitment to our partners; and aiding a democracy under siege," Esper writes in Politico Magazine in an adapted excerpt from his forthcoming book "A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times." "I then pivoted to the fact that 'Congress appropriated the funding, and we don't really have a choice' to not release it. 'It is the law, Mr. President,' I said bluntly."
Esper writes that Trump was unmoved by the suggestion that he was breaking the law.
"With his arms folded in front of him as he leaned forward into his desk, he was silent. He didn't seem to care."
Esper's caveats only add to the long list of officials who cautioned Trump about withholding aid to Ukraine. But Trump didn't listen and his administration froze nearly $400 million in congressionally-approved military assistance for over two months. Experts echoed Esper's point at the time, arguing that Trump's defiance of Congress potentially violated two budgetary laws that lawmakers enacted decades ago to thwart presidents trying to ignore them.
House lawmakers later impeached Trump later over the episode but he was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump's pressuring of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family has received renewed attention since Russia began its war in Ukraine on February 22.
Former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whose ouster was one of the focuses of the impeachment proceedings, previously told Insider that, under the Trump administration, Russian President Vladimir Putin "could just sit back and let the good times roll."
In response to some of Esper's claims, Trump released a statement to "60 Minutes" calling his former Pentagon chief "Yesper" and saying Esper was so "weak and totally ineffective" that Trump had to run the military himself. Esper's book goes on sale tomorrow.