Tag: Trump corruption

Key House committees threaten subpoenas over Trump-Ukraine allegations

Axios logoThe Democratic chairs of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees on Monday sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanding that the State Department produce documents related to allegations that President Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani have pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden.

“Seeking to enlist a foreign actor to interfere with an American election undermines our sovereignty, democracy, and the Constitution, which the President is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend.  Yet the President and his personal attorney now appear to be openly engaging in precisely this type of abuse of power involving the Ukrainian government ahead of the 2020 election.”

— Chairs Adam Schiff, Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel

Why it matters: With a majority in the House, Democrats have the power to subpoena Trump administration officials to cooperate in their investigations. The allegations over Trump and Ukraine have erupted into a source of massive controversy over the past week, with Democratic leaders such as House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) suggesting that they could pave a new path to impeachment.

View the complete September 23 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

Trump defends raising corruption on call with Ukraine leader

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday defended the idea of raising corruption issues with foreign leaders as he faces mounting scrutiny over whether he pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate his political rival.

Trump told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York City that it was fair to ask about corruption when determining whether to provide aid to a foreign country, even as Democrats have raised concerns that the president threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if it didn’t investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son.

“We’re supporting a country. We want to make sure that country’s honest,” Trump said when asked about his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “It’s very important to talk about corruption. If you don’t talk about corruption — why would you give money to a country you think is corrupt?”

View the complete September 23 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Ukraine controversy follows Trump to UN assembly

The Hill logoPresident Trump will arrive in New York City on Monday under a cloud of controversy over his conversations with Ukraine’s leaders, creating a new distraction as he kicks off three days of speeches and meetings at the United Nations General Assembly.

The annual gathering of world leaders is always a frenetic event for a U.S. president, but this one promises to be even more of a pressure cooker given the questions about Trump’s contacts with Ukraine over an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump must also deal with a host of foreign policy crises, most notably the question of how to respond to attacks on Saudi oil fields that the U.S. suspects were done with the hand of Iran.

View the complete September 23 article by Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Ukraine, if you’re listening . . .: How Trump tries to quell controversies by saying the quiet part out loud

Washington Post logoThe Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights

Ukraine, if you’re listening . . .

Much as he did three years ago — when he asked Russia to hack the emails of his Democratic rival — President Trump on Friday seemed to make a similar request of Ukraine, all but urging the Eastern European nation to investigate Joe Biden, his potential Democratic opponent.

“It doesn’t matter what I discussed, but I will say this — somebody ought to look into Joe Biden,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office, swatting away questions about whether he had improperly attempted to pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on the former vice president.

View the complete September 20 article by Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

Mike Pence gave a dodgy answer when asked if Trump used Ukraine aid to force a Biden investigation

AlterNet logoOn his trip to Poland earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence was asked directly about whether the hold-up in about $250 million in military aid to Ukraine had any relation to Rudy Giuliani trying to dig up dirt on the Biden family. Pence had just met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the day before, and he dodged the implication of the question entirely.

Without offering a yes or no, Pence said, “We discussed America’s support for Ukraine and the upcoming decision the President will make on the latest tranche of financial support in great detail.”

What makes Pence’s response even more interesting is that the reporter asked a two-part question: “Did you discuss Joe Biden at all during that meeting yesterday with the Ukrainian President? And number two, can you assure Ukraine that the hold-up of that money has absolutely nothing to do with efforts, including by Rudy Giuliani, to try to dig up dirt on the Biden family?”

View the complete September 20 article by Kerry Eleveld from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top.

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York. Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University, previously served as the acting solicitor general of the United States.

Washington Post logoAmong the most delicate choices the framers made in drafting the Constitution was how to deal with a president who puts himself above the law. To address that problem, they chose the mechanism of impeachment and removal from office. And they provided that this remedy could be used when a president commits “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

That last phrase — “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” — was a historical term of art, derived from impeachments in the British Parliament. When the framers put it into the Constitution, they didn’t discuss it much, because no doubt they knew what it meant. It meant, as Alexander Hamilton later phrased it, “the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Simply put, the framers viewed the president as a fiduciary, the government of the United States as a sacred trust and the people of the United States as the beneficiaries of that trust. Through the Constitution, the framers imposed upon the president the duty and obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and made him swear an oath that he would fulfill that duty of faithful execution. They believed that a president would break his oath if he engaged in self-dealing — if he used his powers to put his own interests above the nation’s. That would be the paradigmatic case for impeachment.

View the complete commentary by George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal on The Washington Post website here.

The Memo: ‘Whistleblower’ furor gains steam

The Hill logoAn air of crisis is enveloping Washington over allegations from a whistleblower against President Trump over his dealings with a foreign government.

The specifics of the complaint are still unclear — something that irks Trump’s critics and supporters alike — but dealings with Ukraine appear to form a major part of it.

The furor is also deepening because of Democratic outrage that the administration has blocked details of the complaint from being made available, even on a classified basis, to members of Congress.

View the complete September 21 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

Phillips Statement on Ukraine Allegations

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released the following statement:

“I came to Congress on a mission to clean up corruption and restore America’s trust in our government. It appears that our President encouraged the leader of Ukraine to investigate his political opponent, thereby inviting foreign interference in our democracy. This continues a pattern of behavior that is corrupt at best, treasonous at worst, and puts our rule of law at risk. Our Constitution transcends any person, politician, or political party, and I call on the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Judiciary Committees to use every legal mechanism possible to obtain all relevant evidence. If the reports are corroborated, we must pursue articles of impeachment and report them to the full House of Representatives for immediate consideration.”

Trump’s rhetoric will have a chilling effect on whistleblowing, legal experts say

Washington Post logoIt’s tough to be a whistleblower any day — but especially today, when the moment’s most prominent one hasn’t even been publicly identified, yet has already been ridiculed by the president of the United States and the country’s most-watched cable news network.

The intelligence official who lodged a complaint about President Trump’s conversation with a foreign leader is “a partisan person” carrying out a “political hack job,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Friday, offering no evidence and saying he didn’t know the person’s identity.

The whistleblower is “a punk, a punk who’s snitching out the president’s phone calls to a foreign leader,” said Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera on Friday’s episode of “Fox & Friends,” adding that the person is one of “these, you know, deep state people.”

View the complete September 20 article by Reis Thebault on The Washington Post website here.

Behind the Whistle-Blower Case, a Long-Held Trump Grudge Toward Ukraine

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — For months this spring and summer, Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, tried to deflect pressure from President Trump and his allies to pursue investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Biden’s son and other Trump rivals.

The pressure was so relentless that Mr. Zelensky dispatched one of his closest aides to open a line of communication with Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers. Mr. Giuliani was the loudest voice among those demanding that Ukraine look at Mr. Biden’s dealings with the country when he was vice president at the same time his younger son, Hunter Biden, was doing business there, and also the release by Ukrainians in 2016 of damaging information about a top Trump campaign aide.

Over breakfast in early July at the Trump International Hotel, Mr. Zelensky’s aide asked the State Department’s envoy to Ukraine for help connecting to Mr. Giuliani. Several days later, the aide discussed with Mr. Giuliani by phone the prospective investigations as well as something the Ukrainians wanted: a White House meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump.

View the complete September 20 article by Kenneth P. Vogel on The New York Times website here.