Tag: Trump abuse of power

Internal Mueller documents show Trump campaign chief pushed unproven theory Ukraine hacked Democrats

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, suggested as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians might have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign rather than Russians, a key witness told federal investigators last year.

Newly released documents show that Manafort’s protege, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, told the FBI of Manafort’s theory during interviews conducted as part of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Gates told the FBI that Manafort had shared his theory of Ukrainian culpability with him and other campaign aides before the election.

The new information shows how early people in Trump’s orbit were pushing the unsubstantiated theory about Ukraine’s role. And it illustrates a link between Mueller’s investigation, which concluded in March, and the current House impeachment investigation of Trump. The president had pushed Ukrainians to open a probe into whether their country interfered in the election — an assertion his allies have made in an effort to discredit Mueller’s findings about Russia’s role.

View the complete November 2 article by Rosalind S. Helderman and Spencer S. Hsu on The Washington Post website here.

GOP sinks lower and outs purported ‘whistleblower’

AlterNet logoRepublican lawmakers are publicly spreading the name of a CIA officer named in a RealClearInvestigations report as the whistleblower who reported President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

The unconfirmed report named a 33-year-old CIA analyst as the purported whistleblower, although mainstream media outlets have declined to disclose the name after his attorneys warned that they have received death threats targeting their client. Republican lawmakers have reportedly repeatedly attempted to get the whistleblower’s name on record at impeachment hearings in hopes that it will be released publicly. (Salon has made the decision not to publish this person’s name, although it will no doubt soon be in the public record.)

The report, which relied primarily on quotes from former Trump administration officials and a “dossier” compiled on this individual that has circulated around Capitol Hill, identifies the purported whistleblower as a “registered Democrat” who worked on the National Security Council under the Obama administration and was held over in the early days of the Trump administration before he was “accused of working against Trump,” according to the report.

View the complete November 2 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

GOP argues whistleblower’s name must be public

The Hill logoAs the evidence mounts of a quid pro quo in President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, the president’s allies in Congress are increasingly hopeful they’ll find exoneration in a singular figure: the government whistleblower they’re fighting to expose.

The clash over the whistleblower’s identity — and that person’s right to anonymity — has emerged as a frontline battle in the partisan war over the Trump impeachment inquiry.

Republicans on Capitol Hill contend that knowing the whistleblower’s identity is vital to the process, granting Trump the right to face his accuser — and learn of any political biases the figure might have. They are effectively waging a whisper campaign about the identity of the anonymous figure who filed the complaint triggering the inquiry launched just six weeks ago.

View the complete November 2 article by Scott Wong and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Pompeo Refuses To Say Whether Ukraine Call Transcript Was Edited

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was listening in to Donald Trump’s infamous July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, was asked on Wednesday whether the summary released by the administration was complete. He refused to answer.

On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert who was also listening in on the call, reportedly told the House impeachment inquiry committees that the document was not a full transcript and that some of Trump’s most overt efforts to link his quid pro quo of security aid for opposition research were omitted. Vindman contemporaneous attempts to get the transcript corrected were unsuccessful.

Pompeo was asked by Fox News whether portions of the call relating to the Bidens and the quid pro quo had been left out of the transcript, as Vindman had testified. Pompeo refused to say they had not.

View the complete November 2 article by Josh Israel on the National Memo website here.

Growing number of GOP senators consider acknowledging Trump’s quid pro quo on Ukraine

Washington Post logoA growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to acknowledge that President Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family as the president repeatedly denies a quid pro quo.

In this shift in strategy to defend Trump, these Republicans are insisting that the president’s action was not illegal and does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense as the Democratic-led House moves forward with the open phase of its probe.

But the shift among Senate Republicans could complicate the message coming from Trump as he furiously fights the claim that he had withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine to pressure it to dig up dirt on a political rival, even as an increasing number of Republicans wonder how long they can continue to argue that no quid pro quo was at play in the matter.

View the complete November 1 article by Rachael Bade and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

White House official who heard Trump’s call with Ukraine leader testified that he was told to keep quiet

Washington Post logoeveral days after President Trump’s phone call with the leader of Ukraine, a top White House lawyer instructed a senior national security official not to discuss his grave concerns about the leaders’ conversation with anyone outside the White House, according to three people familiar with the aide’s testimony.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified that he received this instruction from John Eisenberg, the top legal adviser for the National Security Council, after White House lawyers learned July 29 that a CIA employee had anonymously raised concerns about the Trump phone call, the sources said.

The directive from Eisenberg adds to an expanding list of moves by senior White House officials to contain, if not conceal, possible evidence of Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to provide information that could be damaging to former vice president Joe Biden.

View the complete November 1 article by Tom Hamburger, Carol D. Leonnig, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.

The GOP defense of Trump is getting more corrupt. Here’s what’s next.

Washington Post logoPresident Trump, who possesses supreme confidence in his mesmerizing charisma and powers of persuasion, is considering a plan to recite the text of his corrupt call with the Ukrainian president on live national television.

“I will read the transcript of the call,” Trump told the Washington Examiner, suggesting he might do this as a “fireside chat.”

Trump did not say whether he will first blot out the corrupt parts with his trusty reality-altering Sharpie, though it’s a measure of our current depths that it’s easy to envision him reading selectively from the call summary and denouncing correctives as “fake news.”

View the complete November 1 commentary by Greg Sargent on The Washington Post website here.

Majorities in six battleground states support House impeachment inquiry

AlterNet logoMajorities of voters across six key battleground states support House Democrats’ impeachment investigation into Donald Trump, according to recently released data from a New York Times Upshot/Sienna College survey. By anywhere from 4 to 13 points, registered voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin stand behind the inquiry, 51%-44%. By nearly the exact same margin though, voters also oppose actually impeaching and removing Trump from office, with 52% against removal and 44% in favor. Here’s the breakdown in support for the inquiry by state:

  • Arizona: 53% support, 40% oppose; +13
  • Florida: 49% support, 44% oppose; +5
  • Michigan: 50% support, 46% oppose; +4
  • North Carolina: 50% support, 45% oppose; +5
  • Pennsylvania: 53% support, 44% oppose; +9
  • Wisconsin: 51% support, 44% oppose; +7

Those numbers should absolutely panic GOP Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, who’s up for reelection in 2020. In fact, if you break out how the inquiry registers among “independent/other” voters in each state, Arizona independents favor the inquiry by a whopping 18 points.

  • Arizona: 55% support, 37% oppose; +18
  • Florida: 46% support, 47% oppose; +9
  • Michigan: 51% support, 46% oppose; +5
  • North Carolina: 54% support, 45% oppose; +9
  • Pennsylvania: 54% support, 41% oppose; +13
  • Wisconsin: 54% support, 41% oppose; +13

View the complete November 1 article by Kerry Eleveld from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

‘We think we’re ready’: Democrats near end of closed-door impeachment testimony

Investigators see diminishing returns on the parade of private depositions and are getting ready to make their case in public hearings.

Their list of cooperative witnesses is dwindling. The ones who are showing up are increasingly just corroborating what has already been revealed.

And a growing number of House impeachment investigators say the evidence is overwhelming that President Donald Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine’s government to open spurious investigations into his political opponents, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

At this point, the investigators say they’re seeing diminishing returns on the parade of closed-door depositions — and they’re eager to move to the public phase of the process. That means it’s decision time for Democrats.

View the complete October 31 article by Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio on the Politico website here.

Ex-Trump aide confirms Ukraine aid was linked to Biden probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former top White House official confirmed that military aid to Ukraine was held up by President Donald Trump’s demand for the ally to investigate Democrats and Joe Biden but testified that there’s nothing illegal, in his view, about the quid pro quo at the center of the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry.

Tim Morrison, who stepped down from the National Security Council the day before his Thursday testimony, was the first White House political appointee to appear and spent more than eight hours behind closed doors with House investigators.

“I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed,” Morrison said about a pivotal phone call between Trump and the Ukraine president, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press.

View the complete November 1 article by Lisa Mascaro, Zeke J. Miller and Deb Riechmann on the Associated Press website here.