Overnight Defense & National Security — White House seeks $10 billion for Ukraine

by Jordan Williams - 03/03/22 6:56 PM ET

It’s Thursday, welcome to Overnight Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. Subscribe here: digital-stage.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

The White House is asking for $10 billion for security, economic aid and additional humanitarian assistance for Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion of the country.

We’ll break down the proposal, plus the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol making its most serious accusation to date against former President Trump.

For The Hill, I’m Jordan Williams. Write to me with tips at jwilliams@digital-stage.thehill.com.

Let’s get started.

Biden administration seeks Ukraine aid

The White House on Wednesday formally asked Congress to authorize $10 billion in additional humanitarian, economic and security assistance for Ukraine and allies in central Europe to respond to Russia’s invasion of the country.

The request is meant to address the immediate, short-term needs related to the crisis in Europe caused by Russia’s large-scale invasion, which began last week, the administration said.

This was supposed to be smaller: Democrats and Republicans have signaled support for additional assistance for Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

As of Friday, the White House was eyeing $6.4 billion in additional funding for Ukraine, but that figure increased this week.

Into the numbers: White House Office of Management and Budget acting director Shalanda Young broke down the funding request in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) dated March 2. It asks for $4.8 billion for the Pentagon to support U.S. troop deployments to NATO countries and to provide additional military equipment to Ukraine.

The Biden administration is asking for $5 billion for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for security, economic aid and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and allies on NATO’s eastern flank. Of that funding, $2.75 billion would go toward humanitarian assistance to provide food and support for Ukrainians displaced by the conflict.

Additionally, the White House is also asking for $21 million in additional funding for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to increase enforcement of export control restrictions imposed on Russia and analyze Russian economic vulnerabilities and any U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities.

The request also includes $59 million for a new Justice Department task force to enforce sanctions on Russian oligarchs and $91 million for the Treasury Department to bolster the agency’s work on Russia sanctions.

Finally, $30 million would go to the Energy Department to support the integration of Ukraine’s electric grid with the European Union’s own network.

STATE OF THE WAR

It’s been one week since Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation,” essentially beginning his country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Late Wednesday evening, Russia took control of Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall since the war began. Igor Kolykhaev, the mayor of the city, told The New York Times that 300 civilians and defense troops may have been killed during the takeover.

A senior defense official said Thursday that Russia has launched over 480 missiles since the invasion started, with forces showing a “willingness to hit civilian infrastructure on purpose.”

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Thursday that over 1 million people have already fled Ukraine, “uprooted by this senseless war.”

A second round of talks between both sides ended on Thursday with an agreement on humanitarian corridors for civilians.

Something to watch: The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russia and Belarus for their roles in Moscow’s war with Ukraine. But the Biden administration is also weighing sanctions on India for its Russian military stockpiles, a State Department official told Congress.

Donald Lu, the assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, told lawmakers in a hearing that the administration is weighing how threatening India’s historically close military relationship with Russia is to U.S. security.

“It’s a question we’re looking at very closely, as the administration is looking at the broader question over whether to apply sanctions under CAATSA or to waive those sanctions,” Lu said.

The Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed in 2017 in the wake of the Kremlin’s interference in U.S. elections, includes the authority to sanction transactions with Russian defense or intelligence sectors.

Read more coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

White House asks Congress to approve additional $10B in Ukraine-related aid

Lawmakers want House to stay in session to pass Ukraine aid

US, Russia set up military communication line to prevent accidental clash

⏱ Don’t miss a beat! Get on the list for NotedDC, The Hill’s new insider take on the heartbeat of politics and policy, coming soon.

Jan. 6 panel asserts ‘criminal conspiracy’

Former President Trump may have committed a crime in his effort to keep the 2020 presidential election results from being certified, the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol said in a court filing Wednesday evening.

The accusations are the most serious that the committee has leveled against Trump so far. The allegations are not formal charges, nor do they indicate that the former president could face a criminal prosecution, but they signal that the committee has set its sights at the highest levels in probing what led up to the Capitol riot.

The allegation in detail: The panel said that Trump and Eastman had worked together to try to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct Congress’s certification of the Electoral College votes.

“Had this effort succeeded, the electoral count would have been obstructed, impeded, influenced, and (at the very least) delayed, all without any genuine legal justification and based on the false pretense that the election had been stolen. There is no genuine question that the President and Plaintiff attempted to accomplish this specific illegal result,” the committee wrote in its filing.

The committee also claims it “has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

Where this came from: The development came in the committee’s legal battle to compel documents from John Eastman, the lawyer charged with drafting the strategy for the Jan. 6 certification.

Eastman is seeking to block committee’s subpoena for his private communications, which he has argued are privileged, in part because of his legal work on behalf of the former president.

But the committee argues that Eastman, an attorney for the Trump campaign, may not claim his conversations with the former president are covered by attorney-client privilege, partly because legal advice rendered with the intention of committing a crime is not protected.

Their filing on Wednesday asked the judge to review requested records personally in order to determine whether they fall under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

It’s still unclear how the judge in the case will rule on Eastman’s privilege claims. A hearing for the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

DISSECTING THE FILING

The filing includes depositions with a number of high-ranking former Trump officials, including those who worked for former Vice President Mike Pence, like his national security adviser Keith Kellogg and Pence’s White House counsel Greg Jacob, who opposed plans to have Pence buck his ceremonial duties to certify the election results.

The documents also include heated emails between Eastman and Jacob, who criticized him for forwarding legal advice that “functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States.”

It also includes a transcript of the deposition with Eastman, during which he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 146 times. He has also been ordered by the court to review 1,500 of his emails a day for content that might be covered by executive privilege.

Read the full story here.

House-passed bill addresses toxic burn pits

The House on Thursday passed legislation that would expand access to health care for veterans exposed to toxins, such as chemicals emanating from burn pits, during their military service.

Lawmakers passed the bill largely along party lines, 256-174. Thirty-four Republicans joined Democrats in support.

The bill would expand VA health care eligibility for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits by establishing a presumption of service connection for about two dozen types of respiratory illnesses — like chronic bronchitis and asthma — and cancers.

About burn pits: It’s estimated that about 3.5 million U.S. service members have been exposed to burn pits, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), a nonprofit veterans organization. A survey from IAVA found that 86 percent of its members reported exposure to burn pits or other toxics, with 89 percent reporting symptoms that might have been caused by that exposure.

President Biden said during his State of the Union address that his late son, Beau, may have developed cancer from his exposure to a burn pit while serving in Iraq.

Such burn pits were often used at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan to incinerate garbage like human waste, munitions, plastics, jet fuel and paint.

“They came home, many of the world’s fittest and best trained warriors in the world, never the same,” Biden said. “Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.”

Other efforts to help exposed veterans: Passage of the bill came two days after Biden announced during his State of the Union address that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will add nine respiratory cancers to its list of service-connected disabilities to expand benefits eligibility for affected veterans.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced more comprehensive legislation similar to what passed in the House on Thursday that would create new presumptions of service connection for veterans exposed to toxins and boost federal research into toxic exposures.

It’s expected that the House and Senate will ultimately reconcile those measures and send a combined package for Biden’s signature.

Read the full story here.

TOXIC WATER VICTIMS PUSH FOR JUSTICE

Tucked into Thursday’s legislation was a bill that could allow military families to seek justice for decades of water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina passed with bipartisan support as part of a broad piece of toxics legislation in the House on Thursday morning.

If the legislation goes on to receive Senate approval and become law, the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022 would enable individuals who suffered from on-base water contamination to pursue lawsuits for their illnesses. The bill advanced within the Honoring our PACT Act of 2021 — an expansive act to improve benefits for veterans exposed to toxins — in a 256-174 vote, with 222 Democrats and 34 Republicans in favor.

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act would allow those exposed — even in-utero — to water contamination at the base for at least 30 days between Aug. 1, 1953 and Dec. 31, 1987 to file a claim in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Norther Carolina. To do so, the bill would essentially override a North Carolina legal hurdle that has otherwise made such suits impossible.

“Anybody who served in the United States Marine Corps, and went for combat training, probably went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina,” Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), the Camp Lejeune bill’s sponsor, told The Hill on Wednesday. “So this is not just a North Carolina issue; it’s a national issue.”