Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

House Intelligence report says Trump abused power

The Hill logoDemocrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday unveiled the much-awaited findings of their weeks-long impeachment investigation, laying out in blow-by-blow detail the basis for their allegations that President Trump abused the power of his office.

The 300-page report does not recommend specific articles of impeachment — leaving those decisions to the Judiciary Committee — but it paints a damning portrait of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and all but asserts that those actions warrant his removal from office.

Most of the narrative outlined in the report was previously known, revealed during weeks of interviews with more than a dozen administration officials with a window into Trump’s dealings with Kyiv.

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Pelosi faces tough choices on impeachment managers

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is beginning to send out feelers to gauge if members are interested in serving as impeachment managers, a high-profile role that will put those chosen for it in a political spotlight.

Pelosi’s office has quietly reached out to some members she believes could serve as managers, while others have pushed their own names forward, multiple sources tell The Hill.

Unlike the past two modern impeachment inquiries into sitting presidents that only included House Judiciary Committee members as managers, sources say they believe Pelosi may shake things up by adding managers from the House Intelligence Committee.

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Trump says Democrats are ‘getting killed in their own districts’ over impeachment

POTUS accuses opposition party of trying to humiliate him with Judiciary hearing while he’s on foreign soil

Accusing House Democrats of trying to humiliate him while on foreign soil, President Donald Trump predicted voters will punish the party in November for their impeachment inquiry.

“They’re getting killed in their own districts,” Trump said Monday morning as he left the White House for a two-day NATO summit in London. “I think it’s going to be a tremendous boon for Republicans. Republicans have never, ever been so committed as they are right now, and so united. It’s really a great thing in some ways.”

The comment shows anew how the president views most matters through a prism related to his reelection chances. But his assessment of the inquiry was not all upbeat.

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Impeachment inquiry enters critical new phase

The Hill logoHouse Democrats plowing ahead with their impeachment investigation will enter the twilight phase this week, when lawmakers begin to examine the most crucial question facing them to date: Do President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine warrant his removal from office?

The answer, to be decided by the House Judiciary Committee, seems increasingly likely to result in a House vote later this month to make Trump just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

And it carries far-reaching consequences for a restless nation fiercely divided over Trump’s fitness for office — ramifications that will long echo through the halls of a partisan Congress and extend far into the 2020 election cycle, when voters will be asked to deliver their own verdict on the impulsive figure in the Oval Office.

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Trump’s counsel says president won’t participate in House Judiciary’s first impeachment panel, calling it unfair

Washington Post logoAs the impeachment inquiry moves into a critical week, President Trump and his Republican allies are debating the degree to which the president should participate in a process they have spent more than two months attacking.

On Sunday evening, White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone told the House Judiciary Committee in a five-page letter that Trump would not participate in its first impeachment hearing, scheduled for Wednesday. The invitation from Chairman Jerrold Nadler “does not begin to provide the President with any semblance of a fair process,” Cipollone wrote.

Four constitutional scholars — three chosen by Democrats, one by Republicans — are expected to testify on the standards for impeachment. Nadler (D-N.Y.) told Trump he had until 6 p.m. Sunday to notify the committee that he or his attorneys would attend; he has given Trump until Friday to decide whether to participate more broadly in the impeachment process.

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House Intelligence Committee to review impeachment investigation report Monday

The Hill logoThe House Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing a report Monday on its investigation into President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, a committee official confirmed to The Hill.

The committee is then expected to consider and adopt the report Tuesday evening. The report and any minority views will be sent to the House Judiciary Committee, which could draft articles of impeachment against the president in the next few weeks, according to Politico.

This is a major event, moving impeachment proceedings one step closer to a possible impeachment trial in the Senate.

View the complete November 30 article by Marina Pitofsky and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Trump’s photo op play: Facing impeachment, the president strives to look hard at work

Washington Post logoPALM BEACH, Fla. — As Democrats in Congress push to impeach him, President Trump has toured a manufacturing plant in Texas, boasted about economic gains and signed numerous bills. He served turkey to U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving and grieved with the families of fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

And next week, Trump is scheduled to jet to London to meet with European allies and be received at Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth II.

Sure, Trump has been consumed by the impeachment proceedings, popping off daily, if not hourly, about what he dubs a “hoax.” But he and his aides also have staged photo opportunities and public events designed to showcase the president on the job — a strategy one year out from the election to convince the American people that he is hard at work for them at the same time that Democrats are trying to remove him from office.

View the complete November 30 article by Philip Rucker on The Washington Post website here.

Witness testimony and records raise questions about account of Trump’s ‘no quid pro quo’ call

Washington Post logoPresident Trump was cranky when they spoke on the phone in September, Ambassador Gordon Sondland told members of Congress, but his words were clear: Trump wanted no quid pro quo with Ukraine.

“This is Ambassador Sondland speaking to me,” Trump said outside the White House last week, looking down to read notes he’d taken of Sondland’s testimony. “Here’s my response that he just gave: ‘I want nothing. . . . I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.’ ”

Sondland’s recollection of a phone conversation that he said took place on Sept. 9 has emerged as a centerpiece of Trump’s defense as House Democrats argue in an impeachment inquiry that he abused his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democrats.

View the complete November 27 article by Aaron C. Devis, Elise Viebeck and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Will Trump’s America end in ‘firing squads’? Pulitzer winner David Cay Johnston issues a dire warning

AlterNet logoCongressional hearings about Donald Trump’s attempts to extort  Ukraine into helping him in the 2020 presidential election on his behalf have concluded, at least for now.

These weeks of public and private hearings on the Ukraine scandal have established that Donald Trump and senior members of his administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others, were involved in this plot. Documents released last Friday through a FOIA lawsuit provide further evidence of the scale of the Trump’s regime abuse of power and other high crimes and misdemeanors.

These hearings have also shown that Trump used his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and other operatives to conduct shadow diplomacy as part of the Ukraine scandal. It seems clear they advanced Trump’s political interests (and likely their own financial interests as well) over the interests of the United States and the American people.

View the complete November 27 article by Chauncey DeVega from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

‘Don’t mansplain to me’: Former prosecutor destroys Brietbart reporter’s uninformed claims about the law

AlterNet logoFormer Assistant U.S. Attorney Mimi Rocah ripped a conservative for “mansplaining” his uninformed views about the law.

On Tuesday, Rocah offered her legal analysis of the reporting that President Donald Trump knew of the White House whistleblower’s complaint two weeks before releasing military aid to Ukraine.

“This is what prosecutors call consciousness of guilt,” Rocah explained. “It’s very strong evidence that when he froze the money it was for an illicit purpose.”

View the complete November 27 article by Bob Brigham of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.