Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

White House directed ‘three amigos’ to run Ukraine policy, senior State department official tells House investigators

Washington Post logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting this spring in which officials were determined to take Ukraine policy out of the traditional channels, putting Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and special U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker in charge instead, a top State Department official told lawmakers Tuesday.

George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, told House investigators he was instructed to “lay low,” focus on the five other countries in his portfolio and defer to Volker, Sondland and Perry — who called themselves the “three amigos” — on matters related to Ukraine, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) told reporters Tuesday. Kent took that as a sign, Connolly added, that having been critical of the plan he was being pushed aside “because what he was saying was not welcome” at high levels of the government.

Mulvaney’s meeting, which Kent told lawmakers took place on May 23, according to Connolly, was just days after the administration recalled Marie Yovanovitch from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch spoke to House investigators last week about the campaign against her, which she and other former diplomats have said was organized by President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

View the complete October 16 article by Paul Kane, Karoun Demirjian and Rachel Bade on The Washington Post website here.

‘Game-changer’: Conservative scholar explains why ‘the most compelling evidence for impeachment is now in the public record’

AlterNet logoOn October 8, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent an angry letter to four prominent Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives — Speaker Pelosi, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot L. Engel — declaring that he had no intention of cooperating in their impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. And that declaration, according to conservative political scholar/author Greg Weiner, is in itself “compelling evidence” that Trump deserves impeachment.

In an October 15 article for The Bulwark, Weiner writes, “The most compelling evidence for impeachment is now in the public record. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s refusal to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry is an attack not on its recipients — House Democrats who, through a process of legal alchemy, he accuses of violating phantom processes — but rather, on the relationship between Congress and the executive branch. President Donald Trump is now claiming for himself — and, crucially, future presidents — the authority to determine the legitimacy of legislative oversight.”

Despite its anti-Trump slant, The Bulwark is by no means liberal or progressive. The website was founded in December 2018 by two Never Trump conservatives: Charles Sykes and neocon Bill Kristol, formerly of the now defunct Weekly Standard.

View the complete October 15 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Pence tells House committees he will not cooperate in impeachment inquiry

Axios logoThe counsel for Vice President Mike Pence sent a letter to the chairmen of the House committees investigating President Trump and Ukraine on Tuesday informing them that he will not cooperate with a request for documents in their “self-proclaimed” impeachment inquiry.

Why it matters: This is in line with the White House’s current stance of blanket noncooperation, which has prompted the House chairmen conducting the investigation to warn that defiance could be used as evidence of obstruction in a future article of impeachment. Some have speculated that Speaker Nancy Pelosi could call the White House’s bluff and announce a full House vote authorizing the impeachment inquiry, daring the administration to continue to defy subpoenas and document requests.

Read the letter:

Dear Chairmen:

The Office of the Vice President has received the Committees’ Letter to the Vice President, dated October 4, 2019, which requests a wide-ranging scope of documents, some of which are clearly not vice-presidential records, pursuant to a self-proclaimed “impeachment inquiry.” As noted in the October 8, 2019 letter from the White House Counsel to each of you and to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the purported “impeachment inquiry” has been designed and implemented in a manner that calls into question your commitment to fundamental fairness and due process rights.

View the complete October 15 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

Pence, Pompeo, Barr and Mulvaney could be subpoenaed by House Dems — and also be impeached: Former GOP rep

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Bill Barr, and Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney all may be subpoenaed by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, says ex-Republican Congressman David Jolly.

“This has been methodical and is building up, I think, to subpoenaing Mike Pompeo, possibly the Vice President of the United States, Mick Mulvaney, and Bill Barr, because this touches them,” Jolly said Tuesday morning on MSNBC.

“And so all questions center on who knew what, when,” he added, speaking about Trump’s Ukraine extortion scandal, “who was in the room when these conversations took place.”

View the complete October 15 aritcle by David Badash from the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Trump’s GOP impeachment firewall holds strong

The Hill logoPresident Trump has had a rough couple of weeks, but his Republican wall of defense is holding in the Senate.

Senate Republicans by and large are standing by Trump despite polls showing growing public support for impeachment, even among GOP voters.

Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) have criticized Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he pressed for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic candidate for president. But none has endorsed the House impeachment inquiry.

View the complete October 15 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Freedom Caucus steps into the GOP messaging gap

Conservative hard-liners fill vacuum to counterpunch for Trump

Mark Meadows’ gaze was scrupulously trained on Adam B. Schiff.

On Oct. 3, after deposing a former Trump official for hours, Schiff, the House Intelligence chairman, emerged from a secure room in the Capitol’s basement and addressed a waiting television camera.

“Encouraging a foreign nation to interfere again, to help his campaign,” the California Democrat said of President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That conversation has become the focus of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, and Schiff and party leaders argue it represents a “fundamental breach of the president’s oath of office.”

View the complete October 15 article by Patrick Kelley on The Roll Call website here.

Inside Trump’s Botched Attempt to Hire Trey Gowdy

New York Times logoFor 24 hours last week, Trey Gowdy, the former South Carolina congressman best known for leading congressional investigations of Hillary Clinton, was the new face of President Trump’s outside legal defense and a symbol of a streamlined effort to respond to a fast-moving impeachment inquiry.

A day later, the arrangement fell apart, with lobbying rules prohibiting Mr. Gowdy from starting until January, possibly after the inquiry is over. Now, according to two people familiar with events, Mr. Gowdy is never expected to join the team. And Trump advisers are back to square one, searching for a different lawyer.

How a celebrated announcement quickly ended in disarray offers a rare public glimpse into the internal posturing — and undercutting of colleagues — that has been playing out in the West Wing on a daily basis since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry last month. Even as the White House confronts a deepening threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency, it has struggled to decide how to respond, and who should lead that response.

View the complete October 13 article by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni on The New York Times website here.

‘Are you really not capable of answering a question?’ CNN’s Tapper hammers GOP senator ranting about Mueller and Biden when asked about Trump’s Ukraine scandal

AlterNet logoCNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday hammered Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) over whether it’s appropriate for President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine and China to investigate his political rival, Democratic candidate Joe Biden, as the Republican senator repeatedly tried to deflect questions about the president’s alleged impropriety.

“As a hypothetical, just because I think there are a lot of people concerned about the precedent this is setting, would you have found it acceptable if ahead of the 2012 election then President Obama had asked a foreign leader to investigate one of Mitt Romney’s sons? Would that be okay with you?” Tapper asked Cramer.

Cramer bizarrely referenced special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election, insisting “the corruption involves a former vice president” and “rooting out corruption in other countries was something that Democrats thought they were doing with the Mueller investigation.”

View the complete October 13 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.

Republicans wrestle with impeachment strategy

The Hill logoSenate Republicans realize they need to push back more aggressively on the fast-moving impeachment inquiry in the House, but they have yet to display a unified strategy.

The disunity comes as public opinion polls show growing support for impeachment proceedings, giving more momentum to congressional Democrats almost three weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the inquiry.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is spearheading the GOP counteroffensive and plans to call President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, before his panel to testify about former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian corruption.

View the complete October 13 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Impeachment has put Trump in a different place. He’s showing it every day.

Washington Post logoPresident Trump delivered a characteristic performance Thursday night in Minneapolis. His 100-minute rally speech was complete with scattered vulgarities, caustic attacks on political opponents, including former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and an accusation that Democrats who have begun an impeachment inquiry are carrying out “a brazen attempt to overthrow our government.”

For the president it was all in a day’s work. And ever since the first stories broke three weeks ago about Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to help find damaging information about the Bidens and about Hillary Clinton, there has been some version of the Minnesota performance virtually every day.

Many Americans have become inured to the president’s volatile behavior. Yet even by the standards of this presidency, Trump has been operating beyond his often-untethered bounds. His Twitter feed has been more frantic, his public comments angrier and more abusive, his sense of victimhood more visible than ever. Including his attacks on the investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, there may be no period in the entirety of Trump’s presidency comparable to the behavior now on display.

View the complete October 12 article by Dan Balz on The Washington Post website here.