Tag: Trump bribery

Zelensky planned to announce Trump’s ‘quo’ on my show. Here’s what happened.

Washington Post logoThe phrase “quid pro quo” is usually translated as “something for something.” In the case of President Trump’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it appears that the “quo” was supposed to have been a declaration of Zelensky’s commitment to undertake investigations into the 2016 election and Joe Biden. The New York Times has reported that a public announcement was set to be made on my CNN program. So I think I owe readers my best understanding of what actually happened.

Ever since Zelensky was elected president in April, my team and I have been interested in having him appear on the show. He is a fascinating political figure, a total outsider who swept into power. I had visited Ukraine several times and interviewed the previous president of the country three times, so I was familiar with the place and had good contacts.

We began the process of establishing connections with the new administration, which was cordial and efficient throughout. Heads of state often find it useful to give interviews around the time of the annual U.N. General Assembly in September, and that was our target.

View the complete November 14 commentary by Fareed Zakaria on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s former business associates have no doubt believing president’s guilt in the Ukraine scandal: report

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump has been accused by multiple witnesses of withholding military aid from Ukraine to pressure its government to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, and none of his associates are surprised.

The president’s former employees and White House officials agreed the scheme sketched out by impeachment inquiry witnesses sounds like the guy they worked with in both real estate and government, reported Politico.

“He does nothing without a quid pro quo,” said one former White House official. “Nothing. Whatever deal has got to be to his advantage.”

View the complete November 15 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

No, Everybody Doesn’t Abuse The Presidency

The testimony of State Department official George Kent and acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor confirmed the elements of the Ukraine scandal that have led to impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, specifically that the president and his associates, especially Rudy Giuliani and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, sought to instigate and publicize a phony “investigation” of Joe Biden by withholding military aid from Ukraine.

None of the chaff thrown up by the Republicans during those hearings effectively contradicted the narrative outlining this abuse of power. Sooner or later, as the hearings continue, the majority of Americans will understand fully what Trump did and why his misconduct was so dangerous.

The Republicans will continue to object that the testimony given by Taylor and Kent, and the witnesses who follow, is only “hearsay.” Trump himself whines that the whistleblower’s complaint, approved by his own inspector general, is “second- and third-hand.”

View the complete November 14 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

White House budget official is prepared to testify on frozen Ukraine aid

Mark Sandy’s lawyer indicates he intends to testify Saturday if he receives a subpoena from lawmakers.

Mark Sandy, a senior White House budget official, is prepared to testify Saturday to House impeachment investigators about his knowledge of President Donald Trump’s decision to halt nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, his lawyer indicated Thursday.

Sandy’s lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder — who is also representing former National Security Council aide Tim Morrison — said Sandy intends to testify if he receives a subpoena from lawmakers, a step Democrats have repeatedly taken with other cooperative witnesses to sidestep orders from the White House to refuse to testify.

A series of witnesses have indicated Trump ordered a freeze on military aid in early July, just as he and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani were leaning on senior Ukrainian officials to announce investigations of Trump’s political rivals. The aid, which Ukraine depends upon to help fend off Russian military aggression in Crimea, was held until Sept. 11, despite unanimous approval from the State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon, CIA and National Security Council that it should be distributed.

View the complete November 14 article by Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Fox & Friends hosts visibly deflate after legal analyst drops the hammer on Trump: ‘The law is not on the president’s side’

AlterNet logoFox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano on Thursday delivered some sobering news to the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” who did their best to spin Wednesday’s impeachment hearings as a win for President Donald Trump.

During an interview, co-host Ainsley Earhardt argued that much of the testimony given by witnesses Bill Taylor and George Kent revolved around merely their opinions of the president’s actions in withholding aid from Ukraine.

“Everybody does have their own opinion,” he acknowledged. “But… there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that the president wanted dirt on Biden and the president was willing to hold up military aid in order to get it.”

View the complete November 14 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

A second State Department official overheard Trump’s call with E.U. envoy discussing Ukraine and ‘investigations’

Washington Post logoHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that testimony presented by two career diplomats during Wednesday’s open impeachment hearing “corroborated evidence of bribery” by President Trump in his relations with Ukraine.

Her comments come as Democrats seek to build a case that Trump sought to withhold military assistance and an Oval Office meeting until Ukraine announced investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son, as well as an unfounded theory that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 presidential election to hurt Trump.

Meanwhile, it was learned Thursday that a second official from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was present when U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke on a July 26 phone call from Ukraine with Trump that more directly ties the president to his administration’s effort to pressure Ukraine’s new leadership.

View the complete November 14 article by John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez and Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Republicans’ conspiracy theories slam into sworn testimony in collision of divergent worlds

Washington Post logoThe question seemed to surprise William B. Taylor Jr., a Vietnam veteran with decades of diplomatic experience.

Couldn’t he “appreciate that President Trump was very concerned,” asked the Republican counsel, that the Ukrainians were “out to get him?”

The lawyer was referring to a conspiracy theory, popular in parts of the political right, that while Democrats have focused on Russia’s efforts to help Trump win the 2016 election, it was actually Ukraine that interfered during that campaign to help Trump’s Democratic opponent.

View the complete November 13 article by Isaac Stanley-Becker on The Washington Post website here.

Pelosi: Trump bribed Ukraine, makes Nixon’s offenses ‘look almost small’

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday accused President Trump of “bribery” in his dealings with Ukrainian leaders, linking the president’s actions to the Constitution’s impeachment clause even while emphasizing that Democrats remain undecided on whether they’ll draft impeachment articles.

“That is in the Constitution, attached to the impeachment proceedings,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol.

She then explained the basis for the charge, which stems from a whistleblower’s complaint that has since been supported by numerous government officials, that Trump leveraged U.S. military aid to Kyiv to secure political favors from Ukrainian leaders.

View the complete November 14 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Devin Nunes pushes absurd conspiracy theories about Obama and ‘nude pictures of Trump’ at impeachment hearing

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, used his time at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing to push conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump and Ukraine.

Nunes began with an opening statement which included a misleading claim that Democrats on the committee had tried to “obtain nude pictures of Trump from Russian pranksters who pretended to be Ukrainian officials,” when in fact Intel Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said he would refer the materials to the FBI.

Nunes went on to allege that the Ukraine whistleblower who reported Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “acknowledged to have a bias against President Trump” and falsely claimed that the whistleblower’s “attorney touted a ‘coup’ against the president,” when the attorney was actually referring to former acting Attorney General Sally Yates being fired for standing up to Trump in 2017.

View the complete November 14 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Hearing room bursts into laugher as Democrat calls Rep. Jim Jordan’s bluff on ‘hearsay’

AlterNet logoRepublicans at today’s impeachment hearing, featuring the testimony of George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Bill Taylor, the senior U.S. envoy to Ukraine, have unveiled a plethora of odd defenses of Donald Trump. They range from “I’M YELLING SO YOU KNOW I’M SERIOUS” to slipping in unsupported conspiracy theories, and most importantly, calling the testimony of these two professional career diplomats nothing more than “hearsay.” Over and over again, we’ve heard them object to these two witnesses because they did not have direct conversations with Trump.

Rep. Peter Welch had quite enough of that nonsense, and as he took his turn at the microphone, he called their bluff, saying, “I say to my colleague, I would be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.”

It was an extraordinary moment that drew big laughter in the room.

View the complete November 13 article by Jen Hayden from Daily Kos  on the AlterNet website here.