Tag: House Intelligence committee

New Subpoena Will Demand Trump Tax Returns (Including Ivanka, Eric, And Don Jr.)

Following a Supreme Court ruling on the matter, the House Intelligence Committee has narrowed a subpoena request to focus more specifically on Donald Trump and the immediate members of his family: Eric Trump, Don Jr., and Ivanka Trump.

The subpoena, which was originally broader and issued to Trump’s longtime lender Deutsche Bank, “no longer seeks financial records for any other members of President Trump’s family,” according to a memo released by the House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff. Schiff added that the panel had taken action voluntarily in order to “accelerate resolution” of the matter.

According to TPM, the move came after the Supreme Court laid out a new test last month instructing courts to weigh congressional subpoenas targeting a sitting president against whether the information can be obtained elsewhere, how broad the subpoena is, its legislative purpose, and how burdensome complying would be for a president. Continue reading.

Republicans have been skipping House Intelligence meetings for months

GOP members say the panel’s virtual sessions are insecure. Democrats accuse Republicans of a partisan snit.

Democrats see a boycott motivated by partisan politics. Republicans argue they have legitimate security concerns.

Either way, GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee have skipped all but one of the panel’s proceedings, public and private, since before Congress went into its coronavirus-lockdown in early March. And that impasse shows no signs of ending, even as the panel takes up issues like China, Covid-19 and the annual intelligence policy bill.

Democrats see it as yet another manifestation of the toxic partisan split dividing the panel during Donald Trump’s presidency, in contrast to the still-bipartisan spirit that prevails on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Continue reading.

How Schiff Used Trump And Mulvaney’s Own Words To Impeach Them

With the release of the Ukraine report from the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Chair Adam Schiff and his colleagues laid out the damning case for impeaching President Donald Trump in excruciating detail. Much of it, however, has been publicly known as transcripts of the inquiry depositions and public hearings revealed the key facts of Trump’s effort to induce Ukraine into investigating his political rivals while withholding military aid and White House meeting.

But because of Trump’s stonewalling — which itself features as a pillar of the president’s misconduct in the report — Republicans have argued that Schiff and the Democrats haven’t persuasively made the case that Trump was a part of the effort to leverage official acts in exchange for the political investigations. While extensive evidence strongly suggests that Trump was at the center of the scheme, not one witness’ testimony tied Trump directly to the quid pro quo.

The Ukraine report, however, gets around this fact by pointing to key statements not as a part of the inquiry itself, but made in public by White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Trump himself.

Continue reading

House Intelligence Committee sends report on Trump and Ukraine to judiciary panel, paving way for possible articles of impeachment

Washington Post logoThe House Intelligence Committee sent its report on President Trump and Ukraine to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, paving the way for possible articles of impeachment.

The report, which states that the president “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security,” was approved on a party-line vote.

The report also hints strongly at charges of obstruction of justice, among other crimes, but does not recommend specific articles of impeachment.

Continue reading

Impeachment Investigators Got Rudy Giuliani’s Phone Records—And They’re Quite Revealing

Trump’s lawyer was in talks with, among others, Devin Nunes and officials at OMB as the president pursued a political agenda in Ukraine.

Rudy Giuliani and one of his indicted Ukrainian associates exchanged a flurry of phone calls with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the top Republican on Congress’ impeachment investigation panel, amid a Giuliani-led effort to dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s political opponents in Ukraine.

The House Intelligence Committee obtained phone records from AT&T showing extensive communications in early April involving Nunes, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and The Hillcolumnist John Solomon, according to records released in the committee’s formal reporton its investigation underlying impeachment charges against President Donald Trump.

The records shed new light on the relationship between Nunes, one of the impeachment inquiries most vehement critics, and the individuals at the center of what committee Democrats describe as an illicit campaign to weaponize U.S. foreign policy to Trump’s political advantage.

Continue reading here.

The GOP’s impeachment report is a series of red herrings

Washington Post logoHouse Republicans released a lengthy report Monday defending President Trump in the face of impeachment proceedings. But several of the arguments in it leave something to be desired.

The more-than-100-page document, crafted to preempt the findings in the report by Intelligence Committee Democrats that is expected to be released publicly Tuesday, is an extensive recitation of arguments that what Trump was doing with regard to Ukraine was not only not impeachable but not even wrong. Yet it relies on a series of straw men, rebutting allegations that aren’t really being made against Trump.

Let’s run through a few of the arguments.

Continue reading here.

House Intelligence Committee to review impeachment investigation report Monday

The Hill logoThe House Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing a report Monday on its investigation into President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, a committee official confirmed to The Hill.

The committee is then expected to consider and adopt the report Tuesday evening. The report and any minority views will be sent to the House Judiciary Committee, which could draft articles of impeachment against the president in the next few weeks, according to Politico.

This is a major event, moving impeachment proceedings one step closer to a possible impeachment trial in the Senate.

View the complete November 30 article by Marina Pitofsky and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

BREAKING: House Intelligence releases impeachment findings

The Hill logoDemocrats on the House Intelligence Committee released a lengthy memo Tuesday detailing their weeks of evidence-gathering as part of the impeachment inquiry, in which they claim President Trump abused the power of his office.

“The evidence is clear that President Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and a debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election. These investigations were designed to benefit his 2020 presidential reelection campaign,” three House Democratic chairs said in a statement.

The report, which the Intelligence panel is poised to transmit to the House Judiciary Committee, lays out details that Democrats hope will boost their case as they seek to argue President Trump is unfit for office. They are primarily, if not entirely, resting their case on the claims Trump used the most powerful office in the world to press Ukraine to open to investigations that would benefit him politically.

Continue reading here.

Nunes denies allegation he met with top Ukrainian prosecutor about Bidens

Washington Post logoThe top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said reports that he met with ex-Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin in Vienna last year were false, but declined to elaborate in an interview on Fox News.

The allegation that Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.) met with Shokin to obtain information about former vice president Joe Biden and his son was made by the attorney for Lev Parnas. Parnas is one of two Soviet-born associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani who were indicted on charges that they broke campaign finance law.

Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, told The Washington Post that Shokin informed Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in December 2018.

View the complete November 24 article by Elise Viebeck and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

House Intelligence Committee in possession of video, audio recordings from Giuliani associate Lev Parnas

The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

The material submitted to the committee includes audio, video and photos that include Giuliani and Trump. It was unclear what the content depicts and the committees only began accessing the material last week.

“We have subpoenaed Mr. Parnas and Mr. [Igor] Fruman for their records. We would like them to fully comply with those subpoenas,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN Sunday, with a committee spokesperson adding they would not elaborate beyond the chairman’s comments.

View the complete November 24 article by Katherine Faulders, John Santucci and Allison Pecorin on the ABC News website here.