Tag: Trump bribery

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.

In the House impeachment drama, Russia still plays big role

WASHINGTON (AP) — For all the talk about Ukraine in the House impeachment inquiry, there’s a character standing just off-stage with a dominant role in this tale of international intrigue: Russia.

As has so often been the case since President Donald Trump took office, Moscow provides the mood music for the unfolding political drama.

“With you, Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared last week, and not for the first time.

View the complete November 18 article by Aamer Madhani and Andrew Taylor on the Associated Press website here.

Using grab bag of arguments, Republicans stick together against impeachment

Washington Post logoThey’ve called the testimony “secondhand information” and “hearsay.” They’ve defended the president’s right to investigate corruption abroad. They’ve raised questions about the anonymous whistleblower who started the probe. They’ve argued that nothing ultimately happened. And, over and over, they’ve attacked the process.

Republicans battling the potential impeachment of President Trump have flitted among a multitude of shifting — and, at times, contradictory — defenses and deflections as they seek to cast doubt on a narrative supported by mounting evidence: that Trump subverted U.S. foreign policy to further his personal aims by pressuring Ukraine to launch politically motivated investigations, using hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid as leverage.

While those attacks — at least 22, according to a Washington Post tally — have done little to undermine the core allegations under investigation in the House, they have been remarkably successful in one respect: keeping congressional Republicans united against impeachment as the GOP casts the probe as partisan.

View the complete November 19 article by Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade on The Washington Post website here.

Volker says he rejected Biden ‘conspiracy theory’ pushed by Giuliani

The Hill logoFormer U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker on Tuesday pushed back on an allegation about former Vice President Joe Biden amplified by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, calling it a “conspiracy theory.”

Volker said specifically that he “rejected” the theory during a meeting with Giuliani on July 19 while insisting he had no knowledge of an effort to investigate Biden within the Trump administration.

“At the one in-person meeting I had with Mayor Giuliani on July 19, Mayor Giuliani raised, and I rejected, the conspiracy theory that Vice President Biden would have been influenced in his duties as vice president by money paid to his son,” Volker said in his opening remarks at a House impeachment hearing on Tuesday.

View the complete November 19 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

7 takeaways from Tuesday’s impeachment hearings

Washington Post logoAfter three witnesses last week painted a broad picture of a U.S. foreign policy hijacked by political interests, this week the impeachment inquiry into President Trump began with testimony Tuesday from four people who serve inside the White House and on the front lines of U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.

Tuesday’s hearings featured:

Continue reading “7 takeaways from Tuesday’s impeachment hearings”

The 22 defenses Trump’s allies have floated on Ukraine and impeachment

Washington Post logoAs House Democrats have investigated President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine over the past two months, Republican lawmakers and Trump allies have floated no fewer than 22 defenses of the president, according to a Fix analysis.

Let’s run through them:

1. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president was appropriate

Who: Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio)

What he said: “I think it’s perfectly appropriate to ask a foreign leader to look into potential corruption,” Wenstrup said Oct. 1.

Context: On Sept. 20, Trump tweeted that his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “pitch perfect.” Since then, Trump has called his call “perfect” more than 150 times, according to a Fix review of Factba.se transcripts.

View the complete November 18 article by JM Rieger on The Washington Post website here.

Impeachment witness says Ukraine ‘gradually came to understand’ Trump’s desired investigation was tied to aid, meeting

Washington Post logoA counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine told lawmakers last week that he was shocked to overhear a phone call in which a top diplomat assured President Trump that Ukrainian officials would pursue an investigation of interest to the U.S. commander in chief — a probe that the diplomat later suggested was of former vice president Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival.

The counselor, David Holmes, also testified that the Ukrainians “gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something in exchange” for a White House meeting or military aid, which was held back as the president and his allies pressed for the Biden investigation, according to a transcript of his testimony released Monday.

Democrats released the transcript of Holmes’s testimony — along with that of another diplomatic official, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale — as they kicked off what will be perhaps the most intense week yet of their impeachment inquiry into whether Trump sought to engage the Ukrainians in a corrupt bargain to help him get reelected.

View the complete November 18 article by Matt Zapotosky, Karoun Demirjian, Ellen Nakashima and Elise Viebeck on The Washington Post website here.

Russia could have monitored Trump’s call with Sondland, State Dept. official testified

David Holmes was in a restaurant in Kyiv with Gordon Sondland when the U.S. ambassador to the EU called Trump.

President Donald Trump’s call to the cell phone of a U.S. ambassador — a call that included a discussion of “investigations” Trump was asking Ukraine to launch into his Democratic rivals — was at risk of being monitored by Russia, a State Department official told House impeachment investigators.

David Holmes was in a restaurant in Kyiv with U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland on July 26, when Sondland called Trump to discuss the probes. Holmes told members of the House Intelligence Committee that he “vividly” recalled the conversation because Trump’s voice was so loud and discernible, and the two spoke so openly about the investigations.

Holmes, the political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, said it immediately made him nervous because two of the three mobile networks in Ukraine are Russian-owned.

View the complete November 18 article by Kyle Cheney and Rishika Dugyala on the Politico website here.

Impeachment witness: Ukraine ‘gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something’

The Hill logoA State Department staffer told House lawmakers last week that he believed officials in Ukraine “gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something” in order for a hold on security assistance from the U.S. to be lifted, according to a transcript released by House Democrats on Monday evening.

David Holmes, a career State Department official now based in Kyiv who is slated to testify publicly later this week, also told lawmakers that he had “never seen anything like” the phone call he overheard between President Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in July. 

“This was an extremely distinctive experience in my Foreign Service career. I’ve never seen anything like this, someone calling the President from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful language. There’s just so much about the call that was so remarkable that I remember it vividly,” Holmes told investigators, according to the transcript.

View the complete November 18 article by Morgan Chalfant, Brett Samuels and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.