Tag: Trump extortion

How Trump supporters justify supporting the president in full knowledge that he’s a criminal

AlterNet logoIt’s been nearly two months since Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and Republicans still haven’t figured out a way to justify their predetermined conclusion: Trump is innocent. Their problem, of course, is the overwhelming evidence that Trump personally conducted an extortion and bribery scheme against Ukraine’s political leadership. As the record clearly shows, he threatened to withhold military aid and promised a White House visit in order to strong-arm President Volodymyr Zelensky into backing Trump’s false accusations against former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic Party leaders.

On Tuesday morning, the Republicans unveiled their supposed impeachment defense strategy, which amounts to little more than a command that Trump’s defenders in Congress keep a straight face while lying their heads off. GOP House leadership circulated a memo making flat-out laughable claims, such as the claim that the now-infamous July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky “shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure,” even though Trump literally says, “I would like you to do us a favor though” immediately after Zelensky asks him to release aid that Congress had already authorized. Continue reading “How Trump supporters justify supporting the president in full knowledge that he’s a criminal”

GOP senator: Republicans don’t have votes to dismiss impeachment articles

The Hill logoSen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to Senate Republican leadership, says there are not enough votes in the Senate to immediately dismiss any articles of impeachment passed by the House against President Trump.

Republicans have discussed the possibility of quickly dismissing charges against Trump, which would just require 51 votes. But Cornyn said that would be a difficult hurdle for the GOP, which holds 53 seats in the Senate.

“There’s some people talking about trying to stop the bill, dismiss charges basically as soon as they get over here. I think that’s not going to happen. That would require 51 votes,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday.

View  the complete November 13 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Taylor testifies Trump cared more about ‘investigations’ than Ukraine

The Hill logoWilliam Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, on Wednesday said that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told a member of his staff in July that President Trump cared more about an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden than he did about Ukraine.

Taylor described the conversation relayed to him last week by a member of his staff during his opening remarks at the first hearing in the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.

According to Taylor, the conversation took place on July 26, the day after a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump raised investigations into the 2016 election interference and the Biden family. Taylor said his staffer, who he did not name, overheard a phone call between Sondland and Trump during which the president asked the EU ambassador about the investigations.

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

Hill staffers in both parties overwhelmingly believe Trump headed for impeachment

But both sides also agree the Senate won’t remove the president from office

If Donald Trump’s presidency feels like a roller-coaster ride, with each hair-raising turn of events quickly giving way to a new one — and opinions about him constantly in motion — the results of CQ Roll Call’s Capitol Insiders Survey in 2019 buttress that view.

Few congressional staffers thought, at the beginning of the year, that Trump was headed for impeachment. But the results of CQ Roll Call’s October poll are unambiguous: Staffers in both parties overwhelmingly believe Trump will become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

Still, impeachment is proving deeply divisive, with Republicans characterizing it as nothing more than a partisan witch hunt, while Democrats insist the presidency’s integrity is truly at stake.

View the complete November 13 article by Shawn Zeller on The Roll Call website here.

As impeachment hearings open, Trump downplays the moment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Professing disinterest, President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was “too busy” doing the people’s business to watch the impeachment hearings that imperil his presidency. But even as Trump tried to suggest he was above the fray, the president tweeted two dozen times before noon laying out his grievances about the process playing out on the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

And Trump could not resist taking a swipe at one of his political foes as he sat next to another world leader in the Oval Office.

“It’s a witch hunt, it’s a hoax, I’m too busy to watch it,” Trump told reporters. “There’s nothing there. I see they’re using lawyers that are television lawyers, they took some guys off television. You know, I’m not surprised to see it, because Schiff can’t do his own questions.”

View the complete November 13 article by Jonathan LeMire and Jill Colvin on the Associated Press website here.

At donor dinner, Giuliani associate said he discussed Ukraine with Trump, according to people familiar with his account

Washington Post logoThe April 2018 dinner was designed to be an intimate affair, an opportunity for a handful of big donors to a super PAC allied with President Trump to personally interact with the president and his eldest son.

In an exclusive suite known as the Trump Townhouse at Trump’s Washington hotel, the group — including Jack Nicklaus III, the grandson of the famous golfer, and a New York developer — snapped photos, dined and chatted about their pet issues with the president for about 90 minutes.

Among those in attendance were two Florida business executives who had little history with Republican politics but had snagged a spot at the dinner with the promise of a major contribution to the America First super PAC. They turned the conversation to Ukraine, according to people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private dinner.

View the complete November 12 article by Rosalind S. Helderman, Matt Zapotosky, Tom Hamburger and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats announce public impeachment hearings with eight witnesses next week

The Hill logoHouse Democrats on Tuesday announced a spate of additional hearings for next week as part of the public phase of their impeachment inquiry as they seek to make the case that President Trump pressured a foreign government for his political benefit.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the committee expected to hear on Tuesday from key witnesses such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (NSC), and Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Pence. The panel also plans to hear from Kurt Volker, former special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, a top NSC official.

Schiff said on Wednesday that lawmakers plan to hear from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who revised his testimony to say he believed the president “likely” conditioned nearly $400 million in aid to opening such probes. Later that afternoon, they will hear from top Defense official Laura Cooper, who testified about decisions to withhold the aid, and David Hale, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

View the complete November 12 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Giuliani was close to a podcast deal with news website that spread his Ukraine conspiracies

AlterNet logoAfter John Solomon ran columns in The Hill that touched off a disinformation campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, the publication had discussions with Rudy Giuliani about a business venture.

As ProPublica revealed last month, Giuliani associate Lev Parnas had helped arrange an interview Solomon conducted with a Ukrainian prosecutor who claimed the Obama administration interfered with anti-corruption cases involving high-profile people, including Biden’s son Hunter. Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, trumpeted Solomon’s work on cable news. The Hill articles are now a central component of the Trump impeachment investigation. Continue reading “Giuliani was close to a podcast deal with news website that spread his Ukraine conspiracies”

New testimony adds 2 stunning and previously unknown details about the Ukraine quid pro quo

AlterNet logoNew testimony released Monday from the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the Ukraine scandal included at least two new stunning details about the quid pro quo scheme at the heart of the matter.

Overall, the transcripts for depositions of Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson, who were advisers to U.S. envoy Kurt Volker, built on the story of that we already know: that President Donald Trump pushed a shadow foreign policy to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political opponents, a scheme that involved using his office and military aid as leverage over the country in opposition to the official policy.

But testimony from Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, included two new details about the scheme that we hadn’t previously been aware of.

View the complete November 12 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

“This is a very strong case of bribery’: Democrat Jackie Speier explains why the evidence against Trump is ‘very simple’

AlterNet logoThis past weekend, Republicans went on the news shows to try and spin Trump’s treasonous, criminal, impeachable offenses as president, as alternately something everybody is doing, and … crimes aren’t crimes. Honestly, that’s basically it. Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California is on the House Intelligence Committee that is getting to sit in and watch a parade of government officials testify to about the garbage fire that is our current president’s administration. Since the conservative disinformation team is out in full force, so must Democratic officials spend time “making their case” to the public about how and why Donald Trump broke the law and should be impeached.

The traditional media, for their part, is restrained in its capacity to simply tell the truth because of a perverse belief that simply having a second opinion means you have an opinion worth sharing—regardless of the irrefutable facts. Rep. Speier went on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos to remind everyone that while much of the testimony connected to this impeachment inquiry has been behind closed doors, what has already leaked makes for a very plain and simple case of criminal, impeachable action on the part of Donald Trump. Having been asked how this is different from the Mueller report, Speier tried to remind the world that getting bogged down in BS is the only reason Trump wasn’t impeached 1,000 times already. Continue reading ““This is a very strong case of bribery’: Democrat Jackie Speier explains why the evidence against Trump is ‘very simple’”