Tag: Trump stonewalling

Judge says Treasury must give Trump 72 hours before releasing tax info to Democrats

The Hill logo

A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary order that will require the Treasury Department to give former President Trump‘s personal lawyers 72 hours notice before providing Trump’s tax returns to House Democrats.

Judge Trevor McFadden, a judge in federal district court in Washington, D.C., appointed by Trump, directed the Treasury Department and IRS to provide Trump’s personal lawyers with the three-days notice before providing the former president’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The order lasts until Feb. 5. Continue reading.

U.S. judge freezes House lawsuit seeking President Trump’s IRS tax records

Washington Post logoA federal judge froze a House lawsuit on Friday that seeks to enforce a subpoena for six years of President Trump’s federal tax records.

The judge said he will wait at least until an appeals court rules on whether Congress, in a separate case related to former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn, can sue to compel executive branch officials to testify. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of Washington indicated that the hold in the tax records case could go on longer if the McGahn case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The House sued the administration in July after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to comply with a subpoena for Trump’s business and tax records issued in May. Continue reading.

Trump White House goes 300+ days without a press briefing – why that’s unprecedented

Journalists learn to adapt to current conditions, be they storms or tantrums, vagaries of nature or whims of officials. White House correspondents these days should be well past their withdrawal symptoms from the daily delirium of the once-regular White House press briefing.

Earlier this year, as 300 days passed without a formal briefing, a bipartisan group of past administration press secretaries called for restoration of the daily briefings.

“Bringing the American people in on the process, early and often, makes for better democracy,” they said in an open letter on CNN.com. Continue reading.

Democrats worry Trump team will cherry-pick withheld documents during defense

The Hill logoDemocrats are sounding the alarm that President Trump’s legal team may seek to selectively incorporate undisclosed documents as part of its defense, just months after the White House refused to release such records to House impeachment investigators.

Senate Republicans this week shot down Democratic efforts to prevent Trump’s lawyers from cherry-picking previously unreleased documents to make their case. Now, as the president’s defense team is set to take center stage in the Senate trial on Saturday, Democrats say they fully expect Trump’s attorneys to do just that.

“You know that’s exactly what they’re going to do,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). “This whole trial is calculated to not provide any relevant evidence that the White House should have provided, not provide any witnesses that the White House prevented from being deposed. And the whole thing is to try and just push this through.” Continue reading.

White House snubbed watchdog agency seeking info on Ukraine aid

The Government Accountability Office later concluded the White House violated the law by freezing the military aid.

The White House declined to provide documents to a congressional watchdog investigating President Donald Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine, according to documents released Thursday by Sen. Chris Van Hollen.

The White House responded to the Government Accountability Office’s inquiry with a one-page letter on Dec. 20, citing a legal memo from the Office of Management and Budget that defended the hold on military aid as necessary to ensure spending the funds wouldn’t “conflict with the President’s foreign policy.”

“The White House does not plan to respond separately to your letters,” wrote Brian Miller, a senior associate counsel to Trump, who indicated that the GAOinquiry was meant for acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Cipollone is now Trump’s lead attorney in an impeachment trial that centers on his decision to freeze Ukraine’s military assistance. Continue reading.

Democrats accuse White House of wrongly concealing evidence about Pence that supports the impeachment case

AlterNet logoDemocratic lawmakers accused the White House of improperly classifying a piece of impeachment evidence related to Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday.

That evidence, from Pence aide Jennifer Williams, has been the subject of a dispute between the House impeachment investigators and the vice president. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff has said that “there is no legitimate basis for the Office of Vice President to assert that the information” relating to a Sept. 18 call Pence had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should be classified, but it remains undisclosed to the public.

As I explained in December:

Though the vice president’s office, along with the rest of the administration, has stonewalled the impeachment inquiry’s requests for documents, Schiff’s committee obtained information about the Sept. 18 call through Jennifer Williams, a Pence aide who has already testified. Initially, Schiff explained, Williams testified about Pence’s call and did not assert that any part of it was classified. When she testified publicly, however, she said Pence’s office had since determined that the call was classified. She later sent the committee a “supplemental submission” after reviewing “materials” that refreshed her memory about the call — and it’s that supplemental submission that Schiff would like to see declassified.

Continue reading.

Capitol Hill ‘furious’ after Trump’s State Department abruptly cancelled briefing ‘required by law’: report

AlterNet logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo is receiving heat after the State Department stood-up Congress one day after damning text messages showed associates of Rudy Giuliani targeted an American ambassador, according to a new report.

“The State Department abruptly canceled a classified congressional briefing Wednesday that was supposed to focus on embassy security, a House aide said, infuriating Capitol Hill staffers seeking answers on alleged Iranian threats to U.S. missions overseas,” Politico reported Wednesday.

“The cancellation also coincides with documents suggesting that associates of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani put the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under surveillance,” Politico noted. Continue reading.

White House lawyer says he will defy impeachment subpoena

The Hill logoWhite House lawyer John Eisenberg said that despite being subpoenaed to appear, he will not show up for testimony in the House impeachment inquiry on Monday, on instructions from President Trump. 

White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to William Burck, Eisenberg’s attorney, on Sunday that the Justice Department had advised him that Eisenberg, as a senior adviser to Trump, is “absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony with respect to matters related to his service as a senior adviser to the President.”

“The constitutional immunity of current and former senior advisers to the President exists to protect the institution of the Presidency and, as stated by former Attorney General [Janet] Reno, ‘may not be overborne by competing congressional interests,” Cipollone wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill.

View the complete November 4 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Cracks emerge in White House strategy as witness testifies

The Hill logoCracks are starting to emerge in the White House’s overarching strategy not to cooperate with any aspect of House Democrats’ impeachment investigation and other probes.

In the course of a few hours Friday, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch appeared on Capitol Hill to testify, defying the White House’s order that she skip the closed-door deposition. Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, indicated he will testify on Thursday, after the State Department blocked his appearance this week.

And a federal appeals court ruled Friday in favor of Democrats seeking Trump’s tax returns and other financial records — documents the president has refused to turn over.

View the complete October 11 article by Scott Wong and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Democrats plow ahead as Trump seeks to hobble impeachment effort

The Hill logoDemocrats are charging ahead with their impeachment inquiry despite a White House vow not to cooperate in the investigation, all but daring President Trump to stonewall the probe and add fuel to allegations that obstruction itself is an impeachable offense.

The White House escalated the standoff between Democrats and the president on Tuesday in a letter disregarding the impeachment probe as illegitimate and warning it won’t respond to congressional requests for information.

Yet Democrats on Wednesday said they expected nothing less from an administration that for months has largely refused to cooperate in the House Judiciary Committee’s examination of Trump’s role in Russian election meddling.

View the complete October 9 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.