Tag: Trump abuse of power

Five bombshells from explosive Sondland testimony

The Hill logoDonald Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to the European Union appeared Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where the latest witness in the Democrats’ impeachment investigation delivered hours of explosive testimony tying Trump directly to a politically motivated pressure campaign in Ukraine.

Gordon Sondland, a Republican mega-donor turned EU ambassador, had previously denied that Trump leveraged White House meetings and U.S. military aid in return for investigations into the president’s political rivals. 

View the complete November 20 article by Mike Lillis and Scott Wong on The Hill website here.

Trump dismisses Sondland testimony, says impeachment inquiry should be ‘over’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday said that he didn’t know U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland “very well” and that Sondland’s ongoing testimony Wednesday means that the House impeachment inquiry should be “over.”

Reading from a packet of notes, Trump reenacted a conversation he had with Sondland that was described in testimony, with the president saying he wanted “nothing” from Ukraine in exchange for investigations.

“That means it’s all over. What do you want from Ukraine, he asks me, screaming. What do you want from Ukraine? I keep seeing all these ideas and theories,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House for a trip to Austin, Texas, providing his account of Sondland’s part of the conversation.

View the complete November 20 article by  Morgan Chalfant on The Hill  website here.

Local newspaper in Devin Nunes’ district wonders: Is our congressman coordinating with Trump during impeachment?

AlterNet logoThroughout the public hearings for the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Rep. Devin Nunes of California has set out to discredit the testimony of witnesses subpoenaed by House Democrats. And Nunes’ relentless defense of Trump during the hearings is leading two reporters for McClatchy Newspapers — whose portfolio includes the Fresno Bee in Nunes’ part of Central California — to wonder if Nunes is coordinating with Trump on an impeachment defense.

In an article published by the Fresno Bee on November 19, Kate Irby and Francesca Chambers note the similarities between Trump’s impeachment-related talking points and Nunes’ assertions during Tuesday’s testimony. Nunes, the reporters point out, asserted, “Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won’t give it to them straight, they’ll go elsewhere to find it — which is exactly what the American people are doing.”

Nunes, Irby and Chambers observe, also sounded very Trumpian when, on Tuesday, he expressed his desire to know the identity of the Ukraine whistleblower — inspiring House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to call him out and assert that he wouldn’t tolerate the whistleblower’s identity being revealed.

View the complete November 20 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Sondland tells Congress he acted at Trump’s direction on Ukraine

Testimony from top ambassador ties Trump, Pompeo and other top officials to Ukrainian pressure campaign

Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, on Wednesday told Congress that the president directed him to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and, in turn, former Vice President Joe Bidenand his son Hunter.

The Trump donor and appointee stressed that the president never directly told him U.S. military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon the politically motivated investigations. But he testified, among other new revelations, that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on a pressure campaign.

Buy-in of top administration officials was just one piece of new and conflicting pieces of information that emerged Wednesday at the House Intelligence Committee hearing.

View the complete November 20 article by Katherine Tully-McManus on The Roll Call website here.

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity appears to be knee-deep in Trump’s Ukraine scandal — despite his profuse denials

AlterNet logoFox News host Sean Hannity raved that he never spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about ousted Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch after a third witness confirmed the alleged call to impeachment investigators.

David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, testified under oath that Yovanovitch was the victim of a baseless smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, which led to her ouster. According to a transcript of the closed-door deposition released Monday, the smears originally stemmed from the conservative columnist John Solomon, who wrote in The Hill that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko had claimed that Yovanovitch gave him a “do not prosecute list.” Lutsenko later retracted that claim.

Hale, the third-ranking official at the department, claimed to impeachment investigators that Hannity had pushed the same narrative on Fox News and that Pompeo had reached out to Trump’s favorite host.

View the complete November 20 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Sondland acknowledges Ukraine quid pro quo, implicates Trump, Pence, Pompeo and others

Washington Post logoA U.S. ambassador on Wednesday explicitly linked President Trump, Vice President Pence and other senior officials to what he came to believe was a campaign to pressure a foreign government to investigate Trump’s political rival in exchange for a coveted White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid.

The potentially historic, if hotly disputed, testimony from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is the most damaging yet for Trump in Congress’s intensifying inquiry into whether the president should be impeached.

More forcefully than he has before, Sondland declared that the Trump administration would not give Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a chance to visit the White House — unless Zelensky agreed to announce investigations that could help the president politically.

View the complete November 20 article by Rachael Bade, Aaron C. Davis and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Nunes blasted for nonsensical opening statement at impeachment hearing: ‘Seems unlikely’ GOP knew Sondland would affirm Trump’s ‘quid pro quo’

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes of California has been one of President Donald Trump’s loudest, most strident defenders during the public impeachment hearings — and with Ambassador Gordon Sondland preparing to testify Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes was as bombastic as usual. During his opening statement, Nunes ranted about Democrats linking Trump to Russian interference in the 2016 election, insisted that Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was perfectly innocent, declared that Sondland was “here today to be smeared” by Democrats, and even said that today’s Democrats would have impeached President George Washington if given the chance.

But Nunes’ critics have been pushing back on the congressman’s opening statements, noting that he plays hard and loose with the facts — and appeared unprepared for Sondland’s remarks.

On Wednesday morning, CNBC’s Christina Wilkie tweeted, “Nunes’ opening statement suggests Intel Republicans didn’t know (Ambassador) Sondland was flipping until the last minute, and Nunes didn’t have time to update his opening statement — to which Alex Thomas responded, “Yeah, the reaction I’m getting from everybody on the Hill right now is ‘Nunes read the wrong opening statement.’”

View the November 20 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Impeachment news roundup: Nov. 20

Testimony from Laura Cooper contradicts Republican argument that Ukraine did not know about the hold on security aid

Deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia and Ukraine Laura Cooper told the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday evening that Ukrainian Embassy staff in August were aware of the White House’s hold on military assistance to Kyiv.

Cooper’s testimony ran counter to a key Republican argument about the July phone call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and President Donald Trump — that Ukraine did not know about the hold on security aid.

She told lawmakers that her staff received an inquiry from the Ukranian Embassy asking about the status of the funds on the afternoon of July 25. On a phone call earlier that morning, Trump had asked Zelenskiy to pursue investigations into Burisma and, in turn, the Bidens.

View the complete November 20 article on The Roll Call website here.

Trump Says Founders Never Wanted Congress To Impeach A President

Donald Trump complained on Tuesday that America’s founders didn’t want presidents to be impeached, going so far as to say it is something they “never thought possible.” Trump’s comments came just before he presided over a Cabinet meeting.

“It’s a scam,” Trump said of the House impeachment inquiry. “They’re doing something that the founders never thought possible, and the founders didn’t want. And they’re using this impeachment hoax for their own political gain to try and damage the Republican Party and damage the president.”

Trump falsely claims that the impeachment hearings “have had the opposite effect,” saying with no evidence that “I’m the highest I’ve ever been in the polls.” In fact, a recent poll showed the majority of Americans support impeaching Trump, and his average approval rating continues to hover at just 41 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight.

View the complete November 19 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

Sondland Kept Pompeo Informed on Ukraine Pressure Campaign

New York Times logoThe diplomat at the center of the impeachment inquiry looped in the secretary of state at key moments as American officials pushed for investigations sought by President Trump.

WASHINGTON — Gordon D. Sondland, the diplomat at the center of the House impeachment inquiry, kept Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apprised of key developments in the campaign to pressure Ukraine’s leader into public commitments that would satisfy President Trump, two people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Sondland informed Mr. Pompeo in mid-August about a draft statement that Mr. Sondland and another American diplomat had worked on with the Ukrainians that they hoped would persuade Mr. Trump to grant Ukraine’s new president the Oval Office meeting he was seeking, the people said.

Later that month, Mr. Sondland discussed with Mr. Pompeo the possibility of pushing the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to pledge during a planned meeting with Mr. Trump in Warsaw that he would take the steps being sought by Mr. Trump as a way to break the logjam in relations between the two countries, the people said.

View the complete November 20 article by Michael S. Schmidt on The New York Times website here.