Tag: Trump extortion

McConnell indicates he’ll let Trump’s lawyers dictate Trump’s impeachment trial

Washington Post logoAs soon as the House votes to impeach President Trump — which is likely to happen next week — it is no longer in charge of the process. The situation then goes over to the Republican-controlled Senate, where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will preside but the GOP otherwise can control much of the length and substance of the process.

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is indicating he’ll endeavor to give the White House whatever kind of trial it wants.

Appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Thursday night, McConnell made a point of saying that he would be coordinating with White House counsel Pat Cipollone every step of the way.

Continue reading

In new legal memo, White House budget office defends withholding aid to Ukraine

Washington Post logoThe White House budget office asserts in a new legal memo that it withheld military aid to Ukraine as a temporary move to study whether the spending complied with U.S. policy — and not as a political effort to block Congress’s spending decisions.

The office first began discussing the aid on June 19, the day President Trump learned of the aid from an article in the Washington Examiner and questioned the wisdom of the spending. That move sent aides scrambling, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal conversations.

The Office of Management and Budget extended the temporary hold on the aid eight times in August and September, the last time being Sept. 10. Almost immediately after that hold, the money was released, according to the new memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.

Continue reading

Ambassador’s cellphone call to Trump from Kyiv restaurant was a stunning breach of security, former officials say

Washington Post logoA U.S. ambassador’s cellphone call to President Trump from a restaurant in the capital of Ukraine this summer was a stunning breach of security, exposing the conversation to surveillance by foreign intelligence services, including Russia’s, former U.S. officials said.

The call — in which Trump’s remarks were overheard by a U.S. Embassy staffer in Kyiv — was disclosed Wednesday by the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., on the dramatic opening day of public impeachment hearings into alleged abuse of power by the president.

“The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone” asking U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about “the investigations,” Taylor testified, referring to the president’s desire for a probe of the son of Trump’s potential political opponent in 2020, Joe Biden, and the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden once served.

View the complete November 13 article by Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.

Fact-checking the opening day of the Trump impeachment hearings

Washington Post logoHere’s a roundup of misleading claims made during the opening day of House impeachment hearings.

“President [Volodymyr] Zelensky didn’t announce he was going to investigate [Ukrainian gas company] Burisma or the Bidens. He didn’t do a press conference and say: ‘I’m going to investigate the Bidens. We’re going to investigate Burisma.’ He didn’t tweet about it … and yet you said you have a clear understanding that those two things were going to happen — the money was going to get released but not until there was an investigation. And that in fact didn’t happen.”

“You have to ask yourself: What did President Zelensky actually do to get the aid? The answer is nothing. He did nothing. He didn’t open any investigations. He didn’t call Attorney General Bill Barr. He didn’t do any of the things that House Democrats say that he was being forced and coerced and threatened to do. He didn’t do anything because he didn’t have to.”

“For the millions of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following. Number one, Ukraine received the aid. Number two, there was in fact no investigation into Biden.”

The “nothing to see here” defense was a recurring theme in the hearing. Republicans argued that Ukrainian officials never opened the investigations President Trump requested into the Bidens or supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, yet Trump released the nearly $400 million aid package for Ukraine anyway.

But this is a selective retelling of events. Missing is any mention of key developments between July 18, when the White House told agencies to freeze Ukraine’s aid package, and Sept. 11, when the White House released the funds.

View the complete November 14 article by Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Diplomat ties Trump closer to Ukraine furor

The Hill logoThe top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine on Wednesday offered a long and intricate account of President Trump’s “highly irregular” foreign policy in Kyiv, providing new details of the episode — ones that appeared to boost Democrats’ case — in the first public hearing of their impeachment inquiry.

House Democrats left the open hearing buzzing about the new developments provided by William Taylor, U.S. chargé d’affaires for Ukraine, during his nearly five-hour appearance on Capitol Hill.

In measured and detailed testimony, Taylor more strongly tied Trump to the push for investigations meant to benefit the president, revealing that a member of his staff overheard a conversation between Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland the day after the president’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

View the complete November 13 article by Olivia Beavers, Morgan Chalfant and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries

Washington Post logoSome Republican senators and their advisers are privately discussing whether to pressure GOP leaders to stage a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping six contenders in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.

Those conversations about the timing and framework for a trial remain fluid and closely held, according to more than a dozen participants in the discussions. But the deliberations come as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faces pressure from conservative activists to swat back at Democrats as public impeachment hearings began this week in the House.

The discussions raise a potential hazard for the six Democratic senators running for president, who had previously planned on a final sprint out of Washington before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary.

View the complete November 13 article by Robert Costa, Michael Scherer and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

Trump denies knowledge of call mentioned in impeachment hearing

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday denied knowledge of a phone call that he allegedly had with U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in July about investigations he sought from Ukraine.

“I know nothing about that. First time I’ve heard it,” Trump told reporters in the East Room during a press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when asked about the call, which was described by a U.S. diplomat in public testimony earlier Wednesday.

“I’ve never heard this. In any event, it’s more secondhand information, but I’ve never heard it,” Trump continued.

View the complete November 13 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

New testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign

Washington Post logoAfter weeks in which President Trump’s top aides have figured as the major players in the Ukraine narrative, testimony in the first few hours of the public impeachment hearings Wednesday thrust Trump himself back to center stage.

Acting ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. told lawmakers about a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents: a phone conversation he said Trump had with a top U.S. diplomat asking about the status of “the investigations.”

The phone conversation described by Taylor gave Democrats a chance to renew questions about Trump’s personal involvement in the effort to push Ukraine to investigate his political opponents while the United States withheld security assistance and a sought-after White House meeting.

View the complete November 13 article by Elise Viebeck on The Washington Post website here.

Rudy Giuliani’s Calls To Trump Are Conveniently Secret

The president, who was outraged about Hillary Clinton’s private email server, talked with Giuliani on a personal cellphone.

One of the key takeaways from the Ukraine scandal has been that Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and not a government employee, was running a rogue foreign policy operation meant to benefit Donald Trump’s political interests.

Giuliani was the key player pushing for the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who was seen as an impediment to his goals in that country ― which were primarily to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. And in the infamous July 25 call, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he should talk to Giuliani to move forward on an investigation of the Bidens.

But very little is known about Trump and Giuliani’s own conversations ― when they spoke, how often they spoke and what they said. That’s because, according to officials who spoke to The Washington Post, Giuliani often called Trump on the president’s personal cellphone.

View the complete November 13 article by Amanda Terkel on the Huffington Post website here.

Fox News uses bizarre graphics to smear impeachment witnesses in real time

AlterNet logoSaying that Fox News is a mouthpiece for right-wing disinformation is not a revelatory statement. But the depth of the network’s entanglement with conservative forces cannot be understated. As the first public impeachment hearings take place Wednesday, Fox News has made it clear that, as much as possible, it will lean on the scales to present damning testimony against Donald Trump in a perverse light.

It might seem like satire but as Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff opened the proceedings, Fox News put up graphics alongside Schiff’s face with “information” like: “House GOP has supported censuring Schiff for actions during inquiry;” “9/26: Schiff publicly exaggerated substance of Trump-Zelensky call; “10/13: Schiff admitted to not being clear about contact w/ whistleblower.” If Fox News could, it would likely play ominous music beneath the proceedings any time a Democratic official spoke.

The same treatment was afforded to acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor during his opening statement. Similar graphics presented “factoids” like: “Oct 23: President Trump dismissed Taylor as a ‘Never Trumper;’ “WH called Taylor’s closed-door testimony ‘Triple hearsay;’ “GOP says Taylor had no first-hand knowledge about Ukraine aid.”

View the complete November 13 article by Walter Einenkel from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.