Tag: Trump corruption

Trump official breaks with the president and defends the whistleblower

AlterNet logoAs President Donald Trump fights back the groundswell of opposition triggered by the revelation that he has pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one tactic he has employed is attacking the whistleblower. While much of conduct central to the Ukraine scandal has happened in public, an intelligence community whistleblower complaint — which has been blocked from Congress by the administration — triggered the outcry and greater scrutiny of the series of events.

In response, Trump called the complaint “a political hack job.” He said the stories were “ridiculous,” and he claimed that, though he doesn’t know the whistleblower’s identity, he heard “it’s a partisan person.”

As Media Matters has documented, some of Fox News personalities shared Trump’s rhetoric.

View the complete September 25 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Senate GOP vows to quash impeachment articles

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are vowing to quickly quash any articles of impeachment that pass the House and warn that Democrats will feel a political backlash if they go forward and impeach President Trump.

Republican senators say there are no grounds to impeach Trump and are daring Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to embark on what they dismiss as a fool’s errand that will turn off swing voters.

“My response to them is go hard or go home,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over impeachment.  “If you want to impeach him, stop talking. Do it. Do it. Go to Amazon, buy a spine and do it. And let’s get after it.”

View the complete September 24 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Pence knew about — and actually participated in — Trump’s apparent Ukraine extortion plot: report

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence is seemingly complicit in President Donald Trump’s apparent extortion and bribery plot, based on the transcript of a press conference the VP held in Poland on September 2. At issue is a whistleblower’s complaint that the White House refuses to release. It is believed it says Trump repeatedly threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine until, or in exchange for, that country digging up and handing over dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. There is no evidence any dirt was found or even exists.

Talking Points memo editor Josh Marshall writes Monday that “the key thing about this latest and most egregious Trump scandal is that his senior team was clearly in on it, aware of it, participated in it. One key person here is Vice President Mike Pence.”

Marshall published the official White House transcript of that press conference with President Duda of Poland. It’s clear Pence not only knew about the scheme but participated in it, based on his own admissions.

View the complete September 23 article by David Badash from the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Trump confirms he withheld military aid from Ukraine, says he wants other countries to help pay

Washington Post logoNEW YORK — President Trump confirmed Tuesday that he withheld military aid from Ukraine, saying he did so over his concerns that the United States was contributing more to Ukraine than European countries were.

“My complaint has always been, and I’d withhold again and I’ll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine because they’re not doing it,” Trump told reporters at the United Nations General Assembly.

Trump was responding to reporting by The Washington Post that he told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for at least a week before Trump spoke to the Ukrainian president.

View the complete September 24 article by Seung Min Kim and Colby

Trump administration again pushes limits of authority in shielding whistleblower complaint from Congress

Washington Post logoPresident Trump and his Justice Department are once again on a collision course with Congress over the extent of the commander in chief’s authority, this time stemming from the administration’s refusal to give lawmakers a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s interaction with his counterpart in Ukraine.

Trump, legal analysts say, has the right to withhold such communications with foreign leaders from lawmakers and the public as classified or otherwise privileged. But in this case — when Trump is said to have pressed the Ukrainian president about investigating the son of former vice president Joe Biden, one of his political rivals — he could be misusing his authority to cover up personal wrongdoing, analysts say.

“We cannot say that executive privilege and control over classified information is going to be used to shield the president from his duties to comply with federal law,” said Claire Finkelstein, the faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania law school. “That’s just a sort of complete abuse of office.”

View the complete September 23 article by Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett on The Washington Post website here.

Republican lawmakers scramble to contain Ukraine whistleblower fallout

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are scrambling to contain the political fallout from reports that President Trump pressured a foreign leader to investigate his leading Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Several Republican lawmakers have called on Trump to reveal more details from his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the president on Sunday acknowledged discussing Biden and his possible links to corruption in Ukraine. This effort comes as some Democrats in the House are ramping up their calls for a vote on an impeachment inquiry.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced on the Senate floor Monday afternoon that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is trying to bring the Trump-appointed intelligence community’s inspector general who received a complaint from a whistleblower before his panel to investigate the matter.

View the complete September 24 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Senate Republicans dodge questions on Trump-Ukraine whistleblower complaint

Washington Post logoSenate Republicans on Monday were largely mum on whether Congress should investigate whistleblower allegations that President Trump pressured the leader of Ukraine for help in his 2020 reelection bid, with some ignoring questions on the matter while others disparaged the individual who raised the alarm.

Trump suggested on Sunday that he mentioned former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, on a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July. But Trump has denied that he pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden, who is leading in polls for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, in exchange for military aid.

The revelations have mobilized Democrats in the House, which their party controls, with many members escalating their calls for impeachment proceedings against Trump. A trio of House committee chairs on Monday threatened to subpoena Trump for documents related to his alleged efforts to pressure Zelensky.

View the complete September 23 article by Felicia Sonmez, Mike DeBonis and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.

Instead of ‘No Collusion!’ Trump Now Seems to Be Saying, So What

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The last time he was accused of collaborating with a foreign power to influence an election, he denied it and traveled the country practically chanting, “No collusion!” This time, he is saying, in effect, so what if I did?

Even for a leader who has audaciously disregarded many of the boundaries that restrained his predecessors, President Trump’s appeal to a foreign power for dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is an astonishing breach of the norms governing the American presidency.

That his phone call with Ukraine’s leader took place literally the day after the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III testified to Congress about Russian interference in the 2016 election demonstrated that Mr. Trump took no lessons from that episode about the perils and propriety of mixing his own political interests with international relations.

View the complete September 23 article by Peter Baker on The New York Times website here.

Trump ordered hold on military aid days before calling Ukrainian president, officials say

Washington Post logoPresident Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden, according to three senior administration officials.

Officials at the Office of Management and Budget relayed Trump’s order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They explained that the president had “concerns” and wanted to analyze whether the money needed to be spent.

Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an “interagency process” but to give them no additional information — a pattern that continued for nearly two months, until the White House released the funds on the night of Sept. 11.

View the complete September 23 article by Karoun Demirjian, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakasima and Carol D. Leonnig on The Washington Post website here.

Five things to know about the whistleblower complaint

The Hill logoPresident Trump is facing an escalating controversy surrounding a whistleblower complaint said to be centered on his communications with Ukraine’s leader.

Congress has not seen the complaint, even though Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the allegations were credible and of “urgent concern.”

Here are five things to know about the complaint and the whistleblower process:

View the complete September 23 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.