Tag: Trump abuse of power

Trump criticizes Yovanovitch during her public testimony

The Hill logoPresident Trump harshly criticized the tenure of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as she testified at a House impeachment hearing and emphasized he had the right to remove her from the post.

Trump asserted that “everywhere” Yovanovitch served “turned bad,” and noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke negatively of her during their July 25 phone call.

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors,” Trump tweeted.

“They call it ‘serving at the pleasure of the President.’ The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First!” Trump continued.

View the complete November 15 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries

Washington Post logoSome Republican senators and their advisers are privately discussing whether to pressure GOP leaders to stage a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping six contenders in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.

Those conversations about the timing and framework for a trial remain fluid and closely held, according to more than a dozen participants in the discussions. But the deliberations come as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faces pressure from conservative activists to swat back at Democrats as public impeachment hearings began this week in the House.

The discussions raise a potential hazard for the six Democratic senators running for president, who had previously planned on a final sprint out of Washington before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary.

View the complete November 13 article by Robert Costa, Michael Scherer and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

Live updates: ‘It sounded like a threat,’ ousted U.S. ambassador says of Trump’s comments about her to Ukrainian president

Washington Post logoIn public testimony at the House impeachment hearings, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch said she felt threatened when she read how President Trump talked about her to his Ukrainian counterpart on a July 25 call.

“It sounded like a threat,” she told the House Intelligence Committee during the second open hearing of the impeachment inquiry.

Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her position earlier this year, also testified that she was the target of a “campaign of disinformation” that involved Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and included “unofficial back channels.”

View the complete November 15 article by John Wagner and Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Trump denies knowledge of call mentioned in impeachment hearing

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday denied knowledge of a phone call that he allegedly had with U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in July about investigations he sought from Ukraine.

“I know nothing about that. First time I’ve heard it,” Trump told reporters in the East Room during a press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when asked about the call, which was described by a U.S. diplomat in public testimony earlier Wednesday.

“I’ve never heard this. In any event, it’s more secondhand information, but I’ve never heard it,” Trump continued.

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

Ousted ambassador describes State Department in ‘crisis’ in dramatic impeachment testimony

The Hill logoThe former top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine described a “crisis” at the State Department during her public impeachment testimony on Friday, voicing concern that the agency’s failure to protect foreign service officials who faced attacks for their work overseas put U.S. interests at risk.

Marie Yovanovitch, who privately testified to House investigators last month, described a smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani, corrupt Ukrainian officials and disreputable media figures who successfully facilitated her removal as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in May.

“[T]he attacks are leading to a crisis in the State Department as the policy process is visibly unravelling, leadership vacancies going unfilled, and senior and mid-level officers ponder an uncertain future and head for the doors,” Yovanovitch testified.

“This not a time to undercut our diplomats,” she emphasized.

View the complete November 15 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

New testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign

Washington Post logoAfter weeks in which President Trump’s top aides have figured as the major players in the Ukraine narrative, testimony in the first few hours of the public impeachment hearings Wednesday thrust Trump himself back to center stage.

Acting ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. told lawmakers about a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents: a phone conversation he said Trump had with a top U.S. diplomat asking about the status of “the investigations.”

The phone conversation described by Taylor gave Democrats a chance to renew questions about Trump’s personal involvement in the effort to push Ukraine to investigate his political opponents while the United States withheld security assistance and a sought-after White House meeting.

View the complete November 13 article by Elise Viebeck on The Washington Post website here.

Rudy Giuliani’s Calls To Trump Are Conveniently Secret

The president, who was outraged about Hillary Clinton’s private email server, talked with Giuliani on a personal cellphone.

One of the key takeaways from the Ukraine scandal has been that Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and not a government employee, was running a rogue foreign policy operation meant to benefit Donald Trump’s political interests.

Giuliani was the key player pushing for the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who was seen as an impediment to his goals in that country ― which were primarily to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. And in the infamous July 25 call, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he should talk to Giuliani to move forward on an investigation of the Bidens.

But very little is known about Trump and Giuliani’s own conversations ― when they spoke, how often they spoke and what they said. That’s because, according to officials who spoke to The Washington Post, Giuliani often called Trump on the president’s personal cellphone.

View the complete November 13 article by Amanda Terkel on the Huffington Post website here.

Fox News uses bizarre graphics to smear impeachment witnesses in real time

AlterNet logoSaying that Fox News is a mouthpiece for right-wing disinformation is not a revelatory statement. But the depth of the network’s entanglement with conservative forces cannot be understated. As the first public impeachment hearings take place Wednesday, Fox News has made it clear that, as much as possible, it will lean on the scales to present damning testimony against Donald Trump in a perverse light.

It might seem like satire but as Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff opened the proceedings, Fox News put up graphics alongside Schiff’s face with “information” like: “House GOP has supported censuring Schiff for actions during inquiry;” “9/26: Schiff publicly exaggerated substance of Trump-Zelensky call; “10/13: Schiff admitted to not being clear about contact w/ whistleblower.” If Fox News could, it would likely play ominous music beneath the proceedings any time a Democratic official spoke.

The same treatment was afforded to acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor during his opening statement. Similar graphics presented “factoids” like: “Oct 23: President Trump dismissed Taylor as a ‘Never Trumper;’ “WH called Taylor’s closed-door testimony ‘Triple hearsay;’ “GOP says Taylor had no first-hand knowledge about Ukraine aid.”

View the complete November 13 article by Walter Einenkel from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

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.