Impeachment Investigators Question Budget Official About Withheld Aid

Mr. Sandy testified after the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed him Saturday morning, a day after the former American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, described in stark and personal terms how the president and his allies sought to undermine her and push her out of her job. The budget office had directed him not to appear, according to an official working on the inquiry.

Mr. Trump continued his scorched-earth defense on Saturday, denouncing those involved in the proceedings. In one tweet, he misspelled the name of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee leading the inquiry, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, to what sounds like a vulgarity, claiming the stock markets would collapse if he were impeached. And the president, attributing a quotation to the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, suggested that nonpartisan diplomats who have testified were aggrieved members of the Washington “Swamp” merely trying to exact their revenge.

“It is paramountly obvious watching this, these people have to go,” Mr. Limbaugh said, according to the president. On Friday, Mr. Trump targeted Ms. Yovanovitch on Twitter as she was testifying, prompting heavy criticism, including from Democrats who accused him of witness intimidation.

Mr. Sandy is the first budget official to speak with impeachment investigators, in defiance of a Trump administration directive not to cooperate.

At least three higher-profile Trump administration officials connected to the budget office have stiff-armed investigators: Russell T. Vought, the agency’s acting director; Michael Duffey, who helped carry out Mr. Trump’s directive to freeze the aid; and Mr. Mulvaney, who retains the title of budget director.

Mr. Sandy is the deputy associate director of the budget office’s national security division who once served as the agency’s acting director. Unlike others from his agency who have refused to show up, he is a career official, not a political appointee of Mr. Trump’s. Records in the possession of House investigators indicate that Mr. Sandy signed paperwork on July 25 enforcing the hold, but that Mr. Duffey, a political appointee, signed such paperwork going forward.

Ahead of Mr. Sandy’s testimony, a senior Trump administration official complained that Democrats were “threatening” career officials with subpoenas and depositions without granting the agencies they work for the right to send a lawyer to take part. The official added that Democrats would be “sorely disappointed” when they could not substantiate “their latest false narrative.”