Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

Democrats subpoena White House, State Dept. officials for depositions in impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoHouse Democrats have subpoenaed three Trump administration officials for depositions as part of their impeachment inquiry into President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, lawmakers announced Friday.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) issued subpoenas for two officials with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and one State Department official.

The subpoenas come as Democrats expand their probe into whether Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch two investigations that would benefit him politically.

View the complete October 25 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

GOP lawmakers express concerns about Giuliani’s work in Ukraine

The Hill logoRepublican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee are expressing concerns about shadow diplomacy work by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine.

Even as conservative Republicans are making public shows of their defense of the president, calling the impeachment inquiry unfair and storming the committee hearing room Wednesday, members of the committee tasked with oversight on foreign affairs are skeptical of the former New York City mayor’s involvement in overseas policy.

Some say it’s not completely abnormal for diplomacy to go through back channels, but they said it should not be the norm. And several said it generally shouldn’t be done.

View the complete October 25 article by Laura Kelly on The Hill website here.

Now House Republicans Hate The Rules They Made

Congressional Republicans don’t want to debate President Donald Trump’s attempt to extort political prosecutions of Americans from Ukraine — and given the damning facts emerging every day, their reluctance is understandable, if not honorable. But whining about the process of the impeachment inquiry is only bringing them and their party into deeper disrepute.

Consider the ill-advised and possibly illegal invasion of a secure room in the Capitol on Oct. 23, when a gang of House Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), delayed the closed testimony of Pentagon official Laura Cooper. Brandishing cellphones and carrying on like the drunken frat boys they once were, Gaetz and his cronies then held a pizza party — and, after a few hours, departed. The hearing went on without them.

By busting into the Secure Compartmented Information Facility, the Gaetz gang jeopardized national security far more brazenly and purposefully than Hillary Clinton’s errant emails ever did. Those politicians know that cellphones and other electronic devices are barred from any Secure Compartmented Information Facility in Washington, and they also know why: to prevent foreign theft of U.S. secrets. At least one member apparently realized that the phones shouldn’t be there and tried to collect them, but it was too late

View the complete October 24 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

GOP worries it’s losing impeachment fight

The Hill logoRepublican senators fear President Trump and their party are losing the public opinion fight over impeachment.

Many in the GOP think House Democrats are playing politics with impeachment and that Trump’s actions don’t merit impeachment. They also think the media is biased against the White House and the president.

All the same, they think they’re losing the public battle and that Trump’s lack of discipline is hurting them.

View the complete October 25 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

How does this impeachment process compare with Nixon and Clinton?

Washington Post logo“We know what a constitutionally serious impeachment process would [look] like; we saw that happen both with President Nixon and with President Clinton. This is not that. This is not a search for the truth. This is not a situation where you’ve got the majority, the Democrats, who are upholding their constitutional duty and trying to get to the truth.”

— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaking to reporters, Oct. 22

A persistent complaint by Republicans is that the Democrat-led House of Representatives is conducting an impeachment inquiry against all precedent and tradition. As we have noted previously, the House impeachment inquiry is akin to a grand jury and a prosecutor filing charges, while the Senate holds a trial.

Now let’s look at a narrower question, reflected in the quote — how does the current situation compare with the impeachment inquiries against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton? The proposed Senate resolution introduced Oct. 24 by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and co-sponsored by 44 colleagues also unfavorably compares the current process with the impeachment process used against Nixon and Clinton.

The answer depends on where you start the clock.

View the complete October 25 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

The Cost of Trump’s Aid Freeze in the Trenches of Ukraine’s War

New York Times logoAs President Trump froze military aid to Ukraine and urged it to investigate his rivals, the country was struggling in a bare-bones fight against Russian-backed separatists.

ZOLOTE, Ukraine — Lt. Ivan Molchanets peeked over a parapet of sand bags at the front line of the war in Ukraine. Next to him was an empty helmet propped up to trick snipers, already perforated with multiple holes.

In other spots, his soldiers stuff straw into empty uniforms to make dummies, and put logs on their shoulders to make it look like they are carrying American antitank missiles — as a scare tactic.

“This is just the situation here,” he said, shrugging as he held the government’s position. “The enemy is very close.”

View the complete October 24 article by Andrew E> Kramer on The New York Times website here.

Bannon returns from exile to wage impeachment battle for Trump

The Hill logoFormer White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has returned from exile to defend President Trump, believing the presidency is imperiled and that Trump is in urgent need of a more robust defense against the House impeachment inquiry.

Bannon spent the past two years on a journey to spark populist movements at hotspots around the world after he was banished from Trump’s inner circle and cut off from Breitbart News, where he was executive chairman, for trash-talking members of the president’s family to author Michael Wolff in the book “Fire and Fury.”

Now the impeachment fight has called him back to Washington.

View the complete October 24 article by Jonathan Easley on The Hill website here.

Here’s the exact law that could end Trump’s presidency

AlterNet logoDefenders of President Donald Trump have repeatedly claimed that the president can’t be impeached because he didn’t break any laws, despite the fact that Congress does not need to prove explicitly illegal activity to formally impeach a president.

All the same, one official who served in the George W. Bush administrationbelieves that the president very possibly did break federal laws against bribery with his attempt to shake down Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

Philip Zelikow, a history professor at the University of Virginia, has written an article on Lawfare outlining exactly why the president is in both political and legal jeopardy.

View the complete October 24 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

U.S. judge says he will order State Dept. to begin releasing Ukraine records in 30 days

Washington Post logoA federal judge said Wednesday that he will order the State Department to begin releasing Ukraine-related documents in 30 days, potentially making public sensitive records and communications at the heart of an ongoing House impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

The decision, by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper of Washington, D.C., came in a public records lawsuit filed Oct. 1 by a government watchdog group, American Oversight.

The group in May asked the State Department for records related to alleged efforts by Trump and his administration to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

View the complete October 23 article by Spencer S. Hsu on The Washington Post website here.

House Republicans Endanger Secrets By Invading Secure Facility

The House Republican stunt to storm a secure area where an impeachment deposition was taking place Wednesday wasn’t just a distraction — it was also a national security risk.

Many of the GOP members of Congress who broke into the deposition were carrying electronic devices that are strictly prohibited in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) where the deposition was taking place. Cellphones are banned in the SCIF because there is often classified information in the room, and cellphones can be hacked by hostile actors who want that classified information.

“I held a [Top Secret security clearance] for a decade. You know what literally rule number one was? No cell phones in a SCIF,” Naveed Jamali, a national security expert, tweeted. “Anything that transmits and can record video or audio is specifically forbidden. If you break these rules you might as well drop the ‘S’ (secure) in SCIF.”

View the complete October 24 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.