President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that despite the court’s orders mandate to do so, it cannot meet the imminent deadline for releasing frozen funds for foreign aid.
The deadline was set at 11:59pm on Wednesday (4:59 GMT on Thursday). This comes after Washington, D.C., US District Judge, Judge Amir Ali, discovered that the Trump administration failed to comply with previous orders seeking distribution of the fund.
However, late Tuesday night, administration lawyers appealed Judge Ali’s decision.
In their application, they asked the Court of Appeal to suspend the deadline while legal proceedings take their course.
They also submitted a statement from Pete Marrocco, a Trump alliance who serves as deputy director of the United States Organization for International Development (USAID), a foreign aid agency at the heart of the incident.
Marrocco testified that it could take “a few weeks” before payments were paid, and estimated he would have to pay $2 billion.
He also said the slowdown was the result of a new Trump-era procedure designed to ensure payments line up with administration policy priorities.
However, Judge Ali had previously dismissed the argument, saying it was not a valid reason to refuse to pay the contract.
When he takes office for his second term on January 20th, Trump has announced that the government will await review of the aid program and will impose a 90-day suspension on foreign aid payments.
His order explained that the review would ensure “consistency with US foreign policy.”
Trump also denounced corruption, without providing evidence of fraud, and accused corruption of being run by “radical left madmen.”
This week, 1,600 USAID workers were fired, with the majority of the remaining staff on leave. Late Tuesday, USAID employees were notified that they would be allowed to clean up their offices for 15 minutes.
However, the sudden suspension of foreign aid caused nonprofits, contractors and other businesses to rush, and there was no clear timeline for the government to pay bills. Before the Trump administration, USAID distributed an estimated $600 billion in aid each year.
On February 13, Judge Ali had asked the Trump administration to temporarily lift the funding freeze in order for the government to pay nonprofits and contractors until that day.
However, the judge recently observed that Trump officials “continued a comprehensive suspension of funds.”
He accused Trump’s White House of Used the time to “dive a new post-rationalization for a massive outage.”
Meanwhile, nonprofits and businesses that have been doing business with USAID have warned that if they don’t pay they could be forced to close.
“The length of the government willing to downplay court orders due to its goal of ending life-saving humanitarian assistance is phenomenal,” lawyer Alison Zieve told Reuters.
She represents the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Journalism Development Network, two plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Leading his decision to impose a deadline on Tuesday, Judge Ali questioned Trump administration lawyers whether efforts were made to comply with his first court order.
“I don’t know why I can’t get a straightforward answer from you about this. Do you know of the freeze of contracts and spending of funds for contracts that were frozen by February 13th?” he asked. “Do you know the steps that were actually taken to release those funds?”
Indrenir Sur, a lawyer for the Trump administration, replied evasively. “I’m not in a position to answer that,” Sur said.
Critics say the appeal on Tuesday night could be the setting for the Trump administration to ignore Justice Ali’s deadline.
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