Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

Democrats plow ahead as Trump seeks to hobble impeachment effort

The Hill logoDemocrats are charging ahead with their impeachment inquiry despite a White House vow not to cooperate in the investigation, all but daring President Trump to stonewall the probe and add fuel to allegations that obstruction itself is an impeachable offense.

The White House escalated the standoff between Democrats and the president on Tuesday in a letter disregarding the impeachment probe as illegitimate and warning it won’t respond to congressional requests for information.

Yet Democrats on Wednesday said they expected nothing less from an administration that for months has largely refused to cooperate in the House Judiciary Committee’s examination of Trump’s role in Russian election meddling.

View the complete October 9 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Schiff Says Blocked Testimony Is ‘Evidence Of Obstruction’

House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff blasted the Trump administration on Tuesday for their last-minute decision to hold up congressional testimony by Gordan Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.

Just before he was scheduled to testify about efforts by Trump to get Ukraine to dig up political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, the State Department announced that Sondland would be blocked from appearing.

“The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents, we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress, a coequal branch of government,” Schiff explained.

View the complete October 9 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Former ethics czar warns impeachment letter ‘mistakes Trump for a king’

Georgetown prof: ‘Politically, the letter is strong;’ former GOP staffer calls it ‘bananas’

ANALYSIS | Experts agree a letter the White House sent to House Democrats stating a refusal to cooperate with their impeachment inquiry is legally flimsy and is mostly about politics.

“Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff and two other senior Democrats.

The White House’s top lawyer told the Democrats their “unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice,” telling them he will not cooperate with the probe “under these circumstances.”

View the complete October 9 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Trump Would ‘Love’ For Sondland To Testify — But Won’t Let Him

Donald Trump said on Tuesday that U.S. Ambassador the European Union Gordon Sondland was a “really good man and great American” and that he only wished he could let him testify before Congress about Trump’s questionable actions with regard to Ukraine.

Trump’s comments come just after the State Department abruptly cancelled a planned congressional hearing with Sondland on Tuesday morning. The ambassador had been scheduled to give transcribed testimony for the House impeachment inquiry about his role in Trump’s growing Ukraine scandal.

House Democrats have since said they will subpoena Sondland for his testimony and related documents.

View the complete October 9 article by Josh Israel on the National Memo website here.

Trump’s very inaccurate claim that the whistleblower is ‘very inaccurate’

Washington Post logo“Well, the whistleblower was very inaccurate. The whistleblower started this whole thing by writing a report on the conversation I had with the president of Ukraine. And the conversation was perfect; it couldn’t have been nicer.”

— President Trump, remarks to reporters, Oct. 2, 2019

“The whistleblower said terrible things about the call, but he then — I then found out he was secondhand and third-hand. In other words, he didn’t know what was on the call.”

— Trump, remarks to reporters, Oct. 2

“The Whistleblower’s facts have been so incorrect about my ‘no pressure’ conversation with the Ukrainian President.”

— Trump, in a tweet, Oct. 9 Continue reading “Trump’s very inaccurate claim that the whistleblower is ‘very inaccurate’”

Former national security officials fight back as Trump attacks impeachment as ‘deep state’ conspiracy

Washington Post logoThe debate over President Trump’s fitness for office amid the House-led impeachment inquiry has put renewed scrutiny on national security officials who served in his administration to speak out, even as the president ramps up efforts to discredit the investigation as a “deep state” plot to destroy him.

Over the past week, several former officials have spoken critically of Trump’s conduct and his foreign policy, lending weight to the picture of a president motivated by political interests with little regard for policy expertise, legal boundaries or institutional restraints.

Although the critiques have not all directly addressed the focus of the House investigation — Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — they have added to the case being made by the president’s critics that he is putting U.S. security at risk.

View the complete October 8 article by David Nakamura on The Washington Post website here.

Mulvaney sidelined as Trump’s impeachment crisis rages

The head of Trump’s White House staff is lying low — an approach being adopted by a wide swath of Trump aides paralyzed by an all-consuming fight.

Mick Mulvaney has gone noticeably quiet over the past week, just as the president’s impeachment fight picks up.

The White House’s acting chief of staff has not appeared on any major TV shows to defend President Donald Trump, nor has he had any success in setting up an internal White House war room to respond to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Instead, the president’s top aide has found his influence dwindling inside the West Wing as Trump faces the greatest threat to his presidency to date. It’s the same place where Reince Priebus and Gen. John Kelly found themselves, despite each having a wildly different management style and philosophical approach to the chief of staff job. Trump sidelined all three of them, even after Mulvaney made nice with his family and adopted his “let Trump be Trump” ethos.

View the complete October 9 article by Nancy Cook and Gabby Orr on the Politico website here.

Poll: Majority of Americans say they endorse opening of House impeachment inquiry of Trump

Washington Post logoA majority of Americans say they endorse the decision by House Democrats to begin an impeachment inquiry of President Trump, and nearly half of all adults also say the House should take the additional step of recommending that the president be removed from office, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Tuesday.

The findings indicate that public opinion has shifted quickly against Trump and in favor of impeachment proceedings in recent weeks as information has been released about his efforts to pressure Ukrainian government officials to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 campaign rival, and Biden’s son Hunter.

Previous Post-Schar School or Post-ABC News polls taken at different points throughout this year found majorities of Americans opposing the start of an impeachment proceeding, with 37 percent to 41 percent saying they favored such a step. The recent revelations appear to have prompted many Americans to rethink their positions.

View the complete October 8 article by Dan Balz and Scott Clement on The Washington Post website here.

‘Me! Me!’: An aggrieved Trump spins an alternate reality as impeachment probe escalates

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

President Trump paced. He pointed. He parried — jokingly shaking one reporter’s hand and blocking another’s iPhone with his own.

But then came the denouement, a sudden shift into the aggrieved alternate reality that has consumed him since House Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry into Trump urging his Ukrainian counterpart to dig up dirt on a political rival.

“I feel there was in the 2016 campaign — there was tremendous corruption against me,” said Trump, transforming himself — a man who has now publicly asked no fewer than three foreign countries (Russia, Ukraine and China) to look into his political opponents — into the victim of corrupt behavior.

View the complete October 4 article by Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

House panels seek Ukraine docs from Pence for Trump impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoThree House committees conducting an impeachment inquiry asked Vice President Pence on Friday to turn over documents concerning his involvement in President Trump‘s efforts to pressure Ukraine into launching investigations into a political rival.

The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight panels requested that Pence hand over the documents by Oct. 15.

“Recently, public reports have raised questions about any role you may have played in conveying or reinforcing the President’s stark message to the Ukrainian President,” the chairmen of the three committees wrote in a letter to Pence.

View the complete October 4 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.