Tag: Trump abuse of power

White House budget official says decision to delay aid to Ukraine was highly irregular

Washington Post logoA longtime budget official testified Saturday that the White House decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine in mid-July was highly irregular and that senior political appointees in the Office of Management and Budget were unable to provide an explanation for the delay.

The testimony from Mark Sandy, the first employee of OMB to testify in the House impeachment probe, appeared to confirm Democrats’ assertion that the decision to withhold nearly $400 million in congressionally approved funds for Ukraine, including millions in lethal aid, was a political one.

Sandy, the deputy associate director for national security programs at OMB, testified that he was instructed to sign the first of several apportionment letters in which budget officials formally instituted the freeze on funds, according to two people familiar with his testimony who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. He was never given a specific reason as to why the letter was being sent out, the people added.

View the complete November 16 article by Karoun Demirjian, Rachel Bade, Colby Itkowitz and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.

Bolton and Trump Met Privately Over Withheld Aid, White House Official Testified

New York Times logoJohn R. Bolton, who left the White House in September, has emerged as perhaps the most conspicuous witness who has evaded House Democrats as they build their case.

WASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, met privately with the president in August as part of a bid to persuade Mr. Trump to release $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine, a senior National Security Council aide told House impeachment investigators last month.

The meeting, which has not been previously reported, came as Mr. Bolton sought to marshal Mr. Trump’s cabinet secretaries and top national security advisers to convince the president that it was in the United States’ best interest to unfreeze the funds to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. But Mr. Bolton emerged with Mr. Trump unmoved, and instructed the aide to look for new opportunities to get those officials in front of Mr. Trump.

“The extent of my recollection is that Ambassador Bolton simply said he wasn’t ready to do it,” said the aide, Timothy Morrison, referring to Mr. Trump, according to a transcript of his testimonyreleased by House Democrats on Saturday.

View the complete November 16 article by Nicholas Fandos and Sheryl Gay Stolberg on The New York Times website here.

Top NSC aide puts Sondland at front lines of Ukraine campaign, speaking for Trump

The Hill logoA senior White House official told House impeachment investigators last month that President Trump‘s hand-picked ambassador to Europe had pushed — on behalf of Trump himself — for Ukraine’s president to launch two investigations that could help Trump politically.

Tim Morrison, a top aide at the National Security Council (NSC) who was expected to depart the White House after his testimony, said Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the E.U., had huddled with a top Ukrainian representative on Sept. 1, when he relayed the message that the release of U.S. military aid to the besieged country hinged on Kyiv opening the investigations Trump sought. 

“What he communicated was that he believed … what could help them move the aid was if the prosecutor general would go to the mic and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation,” Morrison testified privately on Oct. 31, according to the transcript released Saturday by Democrats leading the impeachment investigation.

View the complete November 16 article by Olivia Beavers, Mike Lillis and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Russia Loves the Impeachment Hearings Because GOP Is Parroting Kremlin Propaganda

Vladimir Putin could not possibly envision a sweeter gift than Ukraine falling away from the West into the welcoming—albeit bloodied—hands of the Kremlin.

As Russia’s state media watch impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Donald J. Trump they’re loving what they see. They don’t think the man they brag about getting elected is in much danger. They listen in delight as Republicans parrot conspiracy theories first launched by  Russians. And they gloat about the way Trump removed U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, because they blame her for promoting democratic “color revolutions” that weakened Moscow’s hold on the former Soviet empire. Best of all, from the Kremlin’s point of view, they see Trump pushing Ukraine back into the Russian fold.

So while the historical impeachment inquiry, after two days of public hearings, has been deemed by some pundits to lack “pizzazz,” the Kremlin is  having a ball. Instead of disseminating their usual conspiracy theories, the Russians watch gleefully as the Republicans do that for them. From the long-debunked “Crowdstrike” cyber plot positioning Ukraine as the fall guy for what undoubtedly was Russian interference in the 2016 elections, to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories centering around Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros, rivers of Russian dezinformatsiya are flowing down from the President of the United States and the GOP, through the impeachment hearings, to Trump’s cult-like devotees.

The Kremlin also enjoys the Trump-GOP treatment of the Mueller report as a colossal hoax, or even a joke, letting Russian President Vladimir Putin off the hook, and putting him in a position to make light of the whole matter.

View the complete November 16 article by Julia Davis on the Daily Beast website here.

Senior national security official ties key official more closely to Trump on Ukraine in impeachment inquiry

Washington Post logoA former White House national security official told House investigators that Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, was acting at President Trump’s behest and spoke to a top Ukrainian official about exchanging military aid for political investigations — two elements at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on the National Security Council, testified that between July 16 and Sept. 11, he understood that Sondland had spoken to Trump about half a dozen times, according to a transcript of his sworn Oct. 31 deposition released by House committees Saturday. Trump has said he does not know Sondland well and has tried to distance himself from the E.U. ambassador, whom Trump put in charge of Ukraine policy along with two others, even though Ukraine is not part of the European Union.

“His mandate from the president was to go make deals,” Morrison said of Sondland.

View the complete November 16 article by Colby Itkowitz, Karoun Demirjian, Michael Kranish and Shane Harris on The Washington Post website here.

A Friday night surprise: David Holmes throws a wrench in Trump’s impeachment defense

Washington Post logoFormer U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony was the big public spectacle on Friday. The bigger news in the Ukraine scandal appears to have come later in the day in a private deposition.

It came from David Holmes, an aide to top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. Taylor said this week that Holmes overheard President Trump speaking with Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland the day after Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president in July.

And it turns out Holmes fills in a number of key details that Taylor didn’t.

View the complete November 16 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Republicans fumble when confronted with Trump’s witness intimidation — and one even faked a phone call: report

AlterNet logoOne of the biggest problems Republicans face as they struggle to defend President Donald Trump from impeachment is President Donald Trump himself.

That was as evident on Friday as it has ever been when, in the middle of the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing with former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the witness that Trump had attacked her on Twitter while she was testifying.

Schiff said that this behavior constitutes witness intimidation. While there was some dispute about whether the tweets would mee the legal standards for such a criminal charge, they could clearly be considered witness intimidation in the scope of articles of impeachment.

View the complete November 15 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Impeachment witness provides firsthand account of hearing Trump demand ‘investigation’ of Bidens by Ukraine

Washington Post logoPresident Trump specifically inquired about political investigations he wanted carried out by Ukraine during a July phone call with a top U.S. diplomat who then told colleagues that the president was most interested in a probe into former vice president Joe Biden and his son, a State Department aide said Friday in closed-door testimony that could significantly advance House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

David Holmes, an embassy staffer in Kyiv, testified that he overheard a July 26 phone call in which Trump pressed U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would “do the investigation,” according to three people who have read his opening statement and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe its contents.

“Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him to,’ ” Holmes said, according to these people.

View the complete November 15 article by Karoun Demirjian, Rachael Bade, John Hudson and Toluse Olorunnipa on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s central argument against impeachment crumbled under the weight of Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony

AlterNet logoIn the morass of conflicting and often incomprehensible Republican defenses of Donald Trump, there is just one that seemed like it might have legs — especially after Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, spoke during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing. That would be the claim that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine not to strong-arm that nation’s leaders into boosting his re-election campaign, but because of a generalized opposition to “corruption” in that nation. This was laughable on its face, since Trump’s clear and public stance throughout his political career has been pro-corruption. But sure, it might be enough to bamboozle some Americans who don’t follow politics closely and somehow missed hearing that their president is a grifter.

Friday’s hearing, which featured Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, should be enough to kill the last remaining tendrils of any good-faith claim that Trump was motivated by some — don’t laugh now — deeply felt objection to corruption in Ukraine.

“In her time in Kyiv, Ambassador Yovanovitch was tough on corruption, too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies,” House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D.-Calif., said in his opening statement. “And Ambassador Yovanovitch did not just ‘piss off’ corrupt Ukrainians, like the corrupt former prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko, but also certain Americans like Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, and two individuals, now indicted, who worked with him, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.”

View the complete November 15 article by Amanda Marcotte from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Fox Judge Shreds Trump Defenders’ Arguments

“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” — Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

As public hearings on impeachment begin this week, we will see the case for and the case against impeaching President Donald Trump. The facts are largely undisputed, but each side has its version of them.

The Democrats will argue that in his July 25, 2019 telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, seen in the context of months of negotiations between American and Ukrainian diplomats, Trump made it known that if the Ukrainian government wanted the $391 million in military and financial aid that Congress authorized and ordered, it first must offer, or announce that it was seeking, dirt on his likely 2020 political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden or his son Hunter. That implicates a presidential violation of two federal statutes: One is the prohibition of solicitation of campaign help from a foreign government, and the other is the prohibition of bribery.

View the complete November 16 article by Andrew Napolitano on the National Memo website here.