The White House has decided to withdraw the nomination of Elaine McCusker to be the Pentagon's comptroller and chief financial officer, Politico reported Monday, citing two Senate aides.
McCusker, a career civil servant who was nominated to be the comptroller last year, questioned the legality of President Donald Trump's decision to withhold $250 million in aid to Ukraine, a decision at the heart of the recent impeachment proceedings, according to unredacted emails between McCusker and the Office of Management and Budget obtained and published by Just Security in January.
The New York Post first reported in mid-February that McCusker's nomination was in jeopardy and expected to be pulled.
"This administration needs people who are committed to implementing the president's agenda, specifically on foreign policy, and not trying to thwart it," a White House official told the outlet.
Defense One asked McCusker, who serves as the Pentagon's acting comptroller, if she would credit the New York Post story.
She responded at the time: "I wouldn't."
Senate aides told Politico that the chamber received notice of McCusker's nomination withdrawal on Monday.
While the Trump administration argued that it withheld aid to Ukraine to urge the country to adopt more anticorruption reforms, several witnesses testified that the president directly tied the aid and a White House meeting to the Ukrainian president pursuing politically motivated investigations against his rivals.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump in December for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, but the Senate acquitted him in a nearly party line vote last month.
The president's decision to withdraw McCusker's nomination follows his move to oust two critical witnesses who testified against him in the impeachment inquiry: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the former top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, and Gordon Sondland, the US's former ambassador to the European Union.
Trump also fired Vindman's twin brother, Yevgeny, who served as as ethics lawyer on the NSC and had no involvement in the impeachment probe.
Most recently, the president asked John Rood, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, to resign. Rood certified to Congress that Ukraine was eligible to receive the aid the president later withheld. In letters that leaked last fall but were written earlier in the year, Rood undermined the administration's argument that the aid was withheld due to concerns about corruption in Ukraine, arguing that the country had taken "substantial actions" to combat corruption.
Here's a timeline of McCusker's involvement in the Ukraine controversy and what happened in the crucial days leading up to the aid's release: