Tag: Trump impeachment

Nadler hints Trump impeachment inquiry could expand beyond Ukraine

House Judiciary’s first impeachment hearing punctuated by partisan bickering

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler on Wednesday raised the possibility that the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump could be expanded beyond its current narrow scope of a July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president.

In his opening remarks at his panel’s first impeachment hearing, the New York Democrat invoked former Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“The Russian government engaged in a sweeping and systematic campaign of interference in our elections. In the words of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, ‘the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome,’” Nadler said. “The president welcomed that interference.”

Continue reading

GOP tries to connect dots on Biden and Ukraine, but comes up short

Washington Post logo“Did you know that Joe Biden called Ukrainian President Poroshenko at least three times in February 2016 after the president and owner of Burisma’s home was raided on February 2nd by the state prosecutor’s office?”

— Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, in a question directed at witnesses at the impeachment inquiry, Nov. 19, 2019

“It is my understanding that on February 4, 2016, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, under the direction of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, announced the seizure of property from the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings’ founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. The seizure occurred pursuant to a raid on Mr. Zlochevsky’s home on February 2, 2016.”

— letter from Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Nov. 21, 2019 Continue reading “GOP tries to connect dots on Biden and Ukraine, but comes up short”

Republicans are now living in a Trump fantasy world that was cooked up by the Kremlin

AlterNet logoThe following is from page iii of the House Intelligence Committee’s Minority Report on the Ukraine investigation, written by Republican staffers.

The thing that stands out for me is the bit about a “difference of world views.” For example, the Republicans exist in this world:

Aaron Rupar

✔@atrupar

REP. RANDY WEBER (R): Is CrowdStrike in part owned by a Ukrainian?

CHRIS CUOMO: No!

WEBER: … … really?

CUOMO: Yes!

WEBER: That’s not the information that we have.

CUOMO: You have bad information!

Embedded video

32.3K

Twitter Ads info and privacy
9,859 people are talking about this

Impeachment Investigators Got Rudy Giuliani’s Phone Records—And They’re Quite Revealing

Trump’s lawyer was in talks with, among others, Devin Nunes and officials at OMB as the president pursued a political agenda in Ukraine.

Rudy Giuliani and one of his indicted Ukrainian associates exchanged a flurry of phone calls with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the top Republican on Congress’ impeachment investigation panel, amid a Giuliani-led effort to dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s political opponents in Ukraine.

The House Intelligence Committee obtained phone records from AT&T showing extensive communications in early April involving Nunes, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and The Hillcolumnist John Solomon, according to records released in the committee’s formal reporton its investigation underlying impeachment charges against President Donald Trump.

The records shed new light on the relationship between Nunes, one of the impeachment inquiries most vehement critics, and the individuals at the center of what committee Democrats describe as an illicit campaign to weaponize U.S. foreign policy to Trump’s political advantage.

Continue reading here.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace smirks at Republican Doug Collins after he says Schiff must be first witness: ‘You’re pretty wound up’

AlterNet logoRep. Doug Collins (R-GA) on Sunday called for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to be the first witness in the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on impeachment.

Collins made the remarks to FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

According to Collins, Republicans are not being allowed to see the Intelligence Committee’s report on impeachment — which he referred to as the “Schiff report” — until later this week.

Continue reading here.

 

Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor

New York Times logoAndrew Johnson pioneered the recalcitrant racism and impeachment-worthy subterfuge the president is fond of.

Last week, in defense of her father, Ivanka Trump tweeted out a quotation she wrongly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville: “A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.”

The misquotation came from an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal that has since been corrected. What is fascinating about this incident though, is that the quotation actually comes from an 1889 book, “American Constitutional Law,” that defends Andrew Johnson against his impeachment in 1868. By the time the book was written, emancipation and the attempt to guarantee black rights lay in shambles, and conservatives rallied to the defense of Johnson, one of the most reviled presidents in American history.

Much more than impeachment connects the presidencies of Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump. No one expected either man to enter the White House. Both presidencies began with a whiff of illegitimacy hanging over them: Johnson’s because he became president when Lincoln was assassinated, Mr. Trump’s because he won the Electoral College despite having nearly three million fewer popular votes than his opponent, the largest losing margin of any president who actually won the election. The size of the gap did not bode well for American democracy.

View the complete November 29 commentary by Manisha Sinha on The New York Times website here.

The day of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president, minute-by-minute

Washington Post logoJuly 25 was not an obviously remarkable day in the presidency of Donald Trump. It was a Thursday, scheduled with the sort of standard activities in which presidents engage: a ceremony at the Pentagon, a White House event focused on employment. It was as unremarkable as the weather: hot, but not too.

That summary, though, ignores the events that unfolded over the course of the day, events that are at the center of the impeachment inquiry focused on President Trump’s interactions with Ukraine.

On Tuesday, we learned more about how the Trump administration shifted on July 25 in a way that allowed Trump and his team to pressure Ukraine into launching investigations that would benefit Trump personally. In light of that new information, we’ve created the following timeline of the events of the day. A normal day in the Trump presidency, overlaid with some abnormal machinations.

View the complete November 26 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

At Florida ‘homecoming rally,’ Trump builds his case against impeachment

“The radical Democrats are trying to overturn the last election because they know that they cannot win the next election,” he says.

SUNRISE, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Tuesday spent much of his “homecoming rally” here building his case against impeachment before thousands of enthusiastic supporters.

He cast Democrats’ inquiry as a desperate effort to win back the White House in 2020. He went so far as to call the impeachment proceedings “bullshit,” prompting a new audience chant containing the expletive. And he put those proceedings in the same category as the Mueller investigation, labeling all of it a “scam” and a “hoax.”

“They’re attacking me because I’m exposing a rigged system that enriched itself at your expense and I’m restoring government of, by and for the people,” he told the crowd at the BB&T Center.

View the complete November 26 article by Nancy Cook and Matthew Choi on the Politico website here.

Republicans preview impeachment defense strategy

The Hill logoRepublicans are signaling how they intend to punch back against the fast-paced impeachment inquiry, marking a shift from defense to offense after Democrats scrutinized President Trump’s contacts with Ukraine during two weeks of public hearings.

The president and his supporters appear more energized in the impeachment fight, despite several current and former government officials telling Congress their concerns about a shadowy foreign policy led by people inside and outside the Trump administration.

Trump and his defenders have maintained there was nothing wrong with the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked the foreign leader to do him “a favor” by examining unfounded claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election and looking into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, according to a summary readout of the call released by the White House.

View the complete November 26 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Fox News Distorts Justice Dept. Report On Trump Campaign Surveillance

After The Washington Post reported on November 21 that the Justice Department inspector general “found evidence that an FBI employee may have altered a document connected to” the FISA warrant on Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page, some in right-wing media leapt at the chance to declare that their years of theories about illegal surveillance were about to be proven true.

However, both Fox’s “news” and “opinion” sides ignored that the lede of the article also said that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz “has concluded that the conduct did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application.”

Representing the network’s so-called “news division,” Fox chief national correspondent Ed Henry said that “this may just be the beginning” of evidence of FISA abuse, suggesting that the report will uncover that the FBI was “concocting a case” against President Donald Trump. Henry also bragged that “the president was laughed at by people in the media and a lot of Democrats said that this was a conspiracy theory and everything else. Now it is coming home to roost that something stinks here.”

View the complete November 24 article by Bobby Lewis from MediaMatters on the National Memo website here.