Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

First Republican calls for Rick Perry to answer House subpoena

Senior House Democrats say they won’t let up on their demands for documents and testimony from outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry in the wake of his resignation announcement — and at least one Republican agrees with them.

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) called on Perry Friday to comply with a House subpoena and cooperate with the impeachment inquiry into the Trump administration’s actions in Ukraine. The secretary faces a Friday deadline to comply with the subpoena but has not said what he plans to do.

“Everybody that can bring any information to the table ought to testify, so that some huge mistake is not inadvertently made,” Rooney told POLITICO. “I’d like to see any evidence that needs to be adduced brought up and made available to people.”

View the complete October 18 article by Anthony Adragna on the Politico website here.

The Memo: Trump’s sea of troubles deepens

The Hill logoThe swirling troubles around President Trump got deeper this week thanks to a series of missteps.

Chaos and confusion in northeast Syria, an admission of a Ukrainian quid pro quo from White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and the controversial decision to host a forthcoming Group of Seven (G-7) summit at Trump’s own resort in Florida all conspired to push the president even further back onto the defensive. Democrats are picking up speed in their efforts to impeach him.

The White House has been in damage control mode — with limited success.

View the complete October 19 article by Niall  Stanage on The Hill website here.

Impeachment inquiry shows Trump at the center of Ukraine efforts against rivals

Washington Post logoTwo Cabinet secretaries. The acting White House chief of staff. A bevy of career diplomats. President Trump’s personal attorney. And at the center of the impeachment inquiry, the president himself.

Over two weeks of closed-door testimony, a clear portrait has emerged of a president personally orchestrating the effort to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on a potential 2020 political rival — and marshaling the full resources of the federal bureaucracy to help in that endeavor.

On Thursday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney waded further into the morass, saying during a rare news conference that he understood Trump to be asking for a quid pro quo with his Ukrainian counterpart — only to attempt to retract those comments in a bellicose statement six hours later.

View the complete October 18 article by Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

Trump advisers and DOJ enraged by Mulvaney remarks; Pelosi puts no timetable on impeachment inquiry

Washington Post logoWhite House and Justice Department officials were angered Thursday after a combative news briefing by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in which he insisted President Trump did nothing inappropriate, but seemed to confirm that Trump’s dealings with Ukraine amounted to a quid pro quo.

Mulvaney later said that his comments were misconstrued and that no conditions were put on releasing military aid to Ukraine.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to put a timeline on the impeachment process, declining to say whether she agrees with the assessment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the House would vote by Thanksgiving, setting up a Senate trial late this year.

View the complete October 17 article by Colby Itkowitz, Felicia Sonmez and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

Next question for Rick Perry: Will he testify?

Energy Department Secretary Rick Perry’s departure from the Trump administration doesn’t resolve the most pressing question about his role in the Ukraine scandal — whether he will cooperate with House Democrats’ impeachment probe.

Perry, who told President Donald Trump on Thursday he intends to resign, faces a Friday deadline to comply with a House subpoena for information about outreach to Ukraine, which came as the president’s emissaries were pushing Kyiv to launch a corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. House investigators also appear to be edging toward issuing a subpoena for Perry to testify — something he could be freer to do once he’s no longer in the administration.

Perry plans to depart by the end of the year, Trump told reporters Thursday. His confirmation that Perry would leave came two weeks after POLITICO reported that the former Texas governor planned to step down in the coming months, something Perry denied four days later.

View the complete October 17 article by Ben LeFebvre, Anthony Adragna and Zack Colman on the Politico website here.

Trump holds Dallas rally as impeachment fight messes with his lead in Texas

The president is hoping to shore up Republican support as some suburban voters break away.

DALLAS — Texas on Thursday night offered President Donald Trump a much-needed break from the backlash over his Syria decision and the relentlessness of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

To an adoring crowd at his campaign rally, he tested out new, aggressive messaging as he sought to cast Democrats as politically extreme, the Biden family as corrupt, and the media in cahoots with both of them as part of a grand conspiracy.

He justified the idea of removing American troops from Syria by saying he did not want to deplete the U.S. military anymore or continue to entangle the U.S. in what he called “the endless wars.”

View the complete October 1y article by Nancy Cook on the Politico website here.

An avalanche of confessions: Trump’s chief of staff just admitted a stunning amount of wrongdoing on live TV

AlterNet logoActing White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney adopted a new approach to President Donald Trump’s war on impeachment in a Thursday press briefing: admitting a gigantic amount of wrongdoing in one sitting and daring Republicans to care.

The avalanche of confessions began in the White House briefing room, where Mulvaney revealed that the United States will host the upcoming G7 summit of world leaders at Trump National Doral in Miami, the president’s own Florida resort.

This is a grotesquely corrupt move, and the White House knows it. Even if, as Mulvaney claimed, the Doral was the best possible location for the G7 in the country — a ridiculous assertion — it would still be incumbent on the administration to choose another location to avoid the appearance of corruption and the reality of a conflict of interest. Mulvaney claimed that, all things considered, Trump decided he would “take the hit” of accusations of corruption. But it’s not just Trump who “takes the hit,” it’s the entire federal government, and the United States itself, that gets stained with corruption, and that’s a condemnable choice to make.

View the complete October 17 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Fox & Friends hosts deflate after legal analyst shoots down latest GOP impeachment talking point

AlterNet logoThe hosts of “Fox & Friends” on Thursday appeared disappointed when legal analyst Andrew Napolitano gave them unfortunate news about the White House’s latest objections to House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Specifically, Napolitano addressed the letter sent to Congress by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, which claimed that the executive branch did not have to comply with any subpoenas of documents until the House formally voted to open an impeachment inquiry.

“The Republicans changed the rules when John Boehner was the Speaker of the House allowing each individual committee to issue subpoenas without a House-wide vote,” he explained. “So those subpoenas are valid, and those people who resist them, ignore them, who put them in a drawer, do so at your peril.”

View the complete October 17 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

White House Ordered Pentagon To Ignore Congressional Subpoenas

President Donald Trump and members of his administration have been telling employees of the federal government to defy subpoenas coming from House Democrats in connection with their impeachment inquiry, which is probing Trump’s July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And according to one of the Democratic leaders of the inquiry, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, those employees include people in the U.S. Defense Department.

Schiff, according to Defense News, said that Defense Secretary Mark Esper had agreed to comply with a subpoena but was “countermanded.” And Schiff said of Esper being pressured to defy a subpoena, “the case for obstruction of Congress continues to build.”

Despite the Trump Administration urging federal government employees to defy subpoenas from the House, some of the people subpoenaed have testified before the House anyway — including Fiona Hill (formerly Trump’s top adviser on Russia-related matters) and Marie Yovanovitch (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine).

View the complete October 16 article by Alex Henderson from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

House Democrats sharpen counterattacks to Republican impeachment process complaints

Democrats say this part of the inquiry needs to be conducted behind closed doors but public portions coming

House Democrats in recent days have sharpened their counterattacks to Republican assertions that they’re running an illegitimate and nontransparent impeachment process.

The rebukes represent a shift in messaging strategy as Democrats had largely been trying to avoid engaging in a back-and-forth about process, arguing the GOP was manufacturing concerns to avoid having to defend President Donald Trump on the substance of the impeachment inquiry.

But now Democrats are also offering specific rebuttals to Republican complaints about depositions being conducted behind closed doors and the minority not being granted subpoena authority and other process rights.

View the complete October 17 article by Lindsey McPherson and Katherine Tully-McManus on The Roll Call website here.