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. Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an “interagency process” but to give them no additional information — a pattern that continued for nearly two months, until the White House released the funds on the night of Sept. 11. 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. The revelation comes as lawmakers clash with the White House over a related whistleblower complaint made by an intelligence official alarmed by Trump’s actions — and as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is said to be exploring whether it’s time to allow impeachment proceedings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-ordered-hold-on-military-aid-days-before-calling-ukrainian-president-officials-say/2019/09/23/df93a6ca-de38-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html

- White House will release transcript of the Zelensky call and there will be no explicit quid pro quo in that call. We already see the focus from GOP talking heads shifting to this one call and transcript because they know that specific call is not as bad as other conversation.

- Democrats will focus on arguing that you don't need an explicit quid pro quo, GOP will wail about how this is another Democratic witch hunt, people will complain about how the media is to blame.

- Administration will continue to suppress the whistleblower complaint and Democratic subpoenas will get gummed up in court. Meanwhile the public will move on satisfied that there was no explicit quid pro quo.

Remember folks: the important thing here isn't whatever call transcript the White House decides is innocent enough to release. It's the whistleblower complaint they are suppressing and the information therein. Don't get distracted by narrowing in on one specific call when we know the nature of the complaint involved multiple events.

"He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn't give you orders, he speaks in a code. And I understand the code, because I've been around him for a decade", testified Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney.