Tag: Trump abuse of power

Fox News Personalities Who Promoted Bolton Now Scorn Him

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade offered up a novel and deeply ironic retort to The New York Times’ Sunday night bombshell that President Donald Trump told then-national security adviser John Bolton military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on officials there aiding “investigations into Democrats including the Bidens,” which the paper reported based on descriptions by multiple sources of an unpublished manuscript of a forthcoming Bolton book.

“The one thing the president should take from this,” he said on Monday morning’s Fox & Friends, is that “he’s got to do a better job vetting his staff to find out if they actually want to work for him or not, or they actually want to leak out information about him.”

But if anyone could be said to have vetted Bolton for a top position in Trump’s administration, it was Fox. Continue reading.

‘Bizarro world’: Trump baffles the internet by sending Pam Bondi to defend him — after she gave a pass to his fake university

AlterNet logoFormer Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, possibly best-known for refusing to join a fraud investigation into Trump University that ultimately led to the President of the United States forking over $25 million, is right now defending President Trump on national TV during the Senate impeachment trial.

As many on social media noted, Bondi refused to join that investigation that led to a $25 million payment from the president, but was only too happy to accept a $25,000 donation from Donald Trump for her re-election campaign, just as she was deciding on whether or not to investigate him.

Bondi rocketed to the number two trending item on Twitter within minutes of speaking. Continue reading.

McConnell struggles to maintain GOP unity post-Bolton

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is struggling to maintain control of President Trump’s impeachment trial following news of former national security adviser John Bolton’s bombshell manuscript. 

McConnell on Monday deflected growing calls, including from fellow GOP senators, to allow testimony from Bolton and other potential witnesses, which could prolong the trial and deal a massive blow to Trump and Republicans.

Senate debate over whether to call additional witnesses was upended Sunday following a New York Times report revealing that Bolton claims in a draft of his forthcoming book that Trump told him directly he wanted to freeze U.S. assistance to Ukraine to spur an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden. Continue reading.

Trump’s impeachment defense: Who is paying the president’s lawyers?

Washington Post logoAs President Trump faces mounting legal bills from his impeachment trial, he is drawing on national party coffers flush with donations from energized supporters — unlike the last president to be impeached, who left the White House “dead broke.”

The Republican National Committee is picking up the tab for at least two of Trump’s private attorneys in the ongoing trial, an arrangement that differs from the legal fund President Bill Clinton set up, only to see it fail to raise enough to cover his millions of dollars in bills before he left office.

The law firms of Trump’s lead lawyer, Jay Sekulow, and attorney Jane Raskin have received $225,000 from the RNC through November, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. The party will pay the duo for their work this month and probably into February as the trial continues, according to people familiar with the arrangement who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal financing. Continue reading.

Mitt makes his move

The occasional Trump critic is in the middle of an internal GOP fight over the impeachment trial.

After staying relatively quiet throughout the House’s impeachment inquiry, Sen. Mitt Romney now finds himself in the middle of an increasingly bitter debate in his own party.

The Utah Republican has long been open to hearing from former national security adviser John Bolton and other witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, a position shared by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). The trio has searched for a fourth crucial vote to win a majority, but up until Sunday, those appeals seemed to be going nowhere.

Yet following a New York Times report that Trump told Bolton that frozen Ukrainian aid would be restored only if officials in Ukraine announced an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Romney’s push for witnesses has some life — and some Republicans are displeased. Continue reading.

A ‘minor player’ and a ‘shiny object’: Trump’s legal team tries to explain away Rudy Giuliani

Washington Post logoFor months, there have been whispers and prognostications about whether President Trump’s impeachment legal team would throw his most visible personal attorney under the bus. It got to the point where Rudolph W. Giuliani quipped that if it did, he had very good (health) insurance.

Trump’s legal team may not have thrown Giuliani under the bus Monday, but it sure seemed to try to push him to the side — somewhat implausibly.

Trump lawyer Jane Raskin appeared on the Senate floor to offer a lengthy defense of Giuliani’s work, all while emphasizing that he was a “minor player” and a “shiny object” that Democrats were using to distract people. Continue reading.

Starr Mocked Over ‘Ridiculous’ Impeachment Argument

Bringing Ken Starr on to President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team seemed like a terrible idea from the start, and on Monday afternoon, the former independent counsel showed why.

As the former independent counsel who pushed for a slew of impeachment charges against former President Bill Clinton, Starr is in the odd position of having vigorously and publicly advocated for removing a chief executive under much less serious accusations that Trump now faces. So inevitably, his defense was going to draw accusations of hypocrisy.

Yet somehow, he didn’t seem to foresee this and try to mitigate the damage. Continue reading.

Trump team doubles down despite Bolton bombshell

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s lawyers did not change their tactics Monday despite bombshell new revelations related to former national security adviser John Bolton’s alleged knowledge about the Ukraine affair at the center of the president’s impeachment trial.

In hours of arguments on the Senate floor, Trump’s attorneys did not address or seek to knock down Bolton’s account as Trump himself has done.

Instead, they doubled down on their argument that House Democrats did not uncover evidence showing Trump tied military assistance or a White House meeting to Ukraine launching investigations. Continue reading.

Here’s why Trump can’t use ‘executive privilege’ to block Bolton testimony: legal experts

AlterNet logoIt remains to be seen whether or not Republicans in the U.S. Senate will vote to include testimony from witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton — who has said that he would testify if subpoenaed. Trump has asserted that he will invoke executive privilege if Bolton or any other national security officials are called to testify. But according to an article for Just Security written by six contributors (Harold Hongju Koh, Rosa Hayes, Annie Himes, Dana Khabbaz, Michael Loughlin and Mark Stevens), U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts “should reject any such executive privilege claim” and “require Bolton’s testimony.”

“First, judicial precedent does not condone the extension of executive privilege to former officials like Bolton in the context of a Senate impeachment trial,” the reporters explain. “Second, Trump may not invoke national security privilege with respect to Bolton’s and others’ information regarding the president’s conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Third, even if Trump could, any such claim of privilege has now likely been waived by the actions of the president, Bolton and others.” Continue reading.

What did Mitch McConnell know about Bolton bombshell — and when did he know it?

AlterNet logoSenate Republicans are reportedly feeling “blindsided” by the revelation from John Bolton’s upcoming book that Donald Trump personally told the former national security adviser that he was withholding aid to Ukraine until he got his investigations into Democrats and the Bidens. They want to know who in the White House knew about this and why it was withheld from them, they say. They should be looking closer to home, at their majority leader, Mitch McConnell, if indeed this news came as a total shock to them.

Bolton’s lawyer said he provided the manuscript of his book to the White House on Dec. 30. That’s two weeks after McConnell promised Sean Hannity on Fox News, “Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House Counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.” Just a few days after that interview, McConnell told reporters, “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process. There’s not anything judicial about it. […] I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.” He also said that it was the House’s “duty to investigate” and not the Senate’s, and that “we certainly do not need ‘jurors’ to start brainstorming witness lists for the prosecution.” Continue reading.