Tag: Trump impeachment

Fox Judge Shreds Trump Defenders’ Arguments

“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” — Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

As public hearings on impeachment begin this week, we will see the case for and the case against impeaching President Donald Trump. The facts are largely undisputed, but each side has its version of them.

The Democrats will argue that in his July 25, 2019 telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, seen in the context of months of negotiations between American and Ukrainian diplomats, Trump made it known that if the Ukrainian government wanted the $391 million in military and financial aid that Congress authorized and ordered, it first must offer, or announce that it was seeking, dirt on his likely 2020 political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden or his son Hunter. That implicates a presidential violation of two federal statutes: One is the prohibition of solicitation of campaign help from a foreign government, and the other is the prohibition of bribery.

View the complete November 16 article by Andrew Napolitano on the National Memo website here.

Trump opens new line of impeachment attack for Democrats

The Hill logoPresident Trump opened himself up to a new line of attack from Democrats by vigorously criticizing the record of a former ambassador to Ukraine who he ousted earlier this year after she faced a smear campaign from his personal lawyer.

Trump took to Twitter on Friday morning to claim that “everywhere” U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch went “turned bad” and suggested she was to blame for the situation in Somalia, where she did her first tour. Yovanovitch was asked to react to the tweets during the hearing on Friday which was being carried live on air, and described them as “intimidating.” 

The president’s tweet ran counter to a desire by Republicans to avoid attacking the character of career public servants like Yovanovitch, who boasts decades of service in the diplomatic corps in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

View the complete November 16 article by Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Trump denies witness tampering; State official says president asked about ‘investigation’ into Bidens

Washington Post logoPresident Trump dismissed criticism Friday that he had tried to intimidate a witness in the impeachment inquiry, saying a disparaging tweet about former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as she testified before a House panel was “free speech.”

“I have the right to speak,” Trump said at an afternoon event in the Oval Office.

Trump’s tweet — in which he said everything “turned bad” in various places Yovanovitch was posted as a diplomat — came as she testified that she was the target of a “campaign of disinformation” that involved Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

View the complete November 15 article by John Wagner, Colby Itkowitz and Michael Brice-Saddler on The Washington Post  website here.

Yovanovitch impeachment testimony gives burst of momentum to Democrats

The Hill logoDemocrats’ impeachment inquiry received a boost of momentum from the Friday testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, who faced public attacks by President Trump as she detailed in personal terms how a shadowy smear campaign successfully led to her removal as the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine.

In a moment that would’ve been perfect for television split screens, Yovanovitch was in the midst of describing the “terrible” feeling of learning she was being abruptly recalled from Kyiv when Trump issued a tweet attacking her diplomatic record, describing her as having a reverse-Midas touch when it came to foreign policy.

“Honestly, after 33 years to our country — it was terrible, it was not the way I wanted my career to end,” Yovanovitch testified during the second public impeachment inquiry, shaking her head and closing her eyes as she recalled the moment.

View the complete November 15 article by Olivia Beavers and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump is throwing Sondland under the bus. But the new spin has a fatal defect.

Washington Post logoThe plight of Gordon Sondland is an object lesson in the perils awaiting those who get sucked under by the gravitational pull of Trump’s bottomless corruption and narcissism but fall just short of displaying absolute loyalty and subservience to the Trump cause.

Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, is now getting accused by at least one Trump loyalist of fabricating his latest round of testimony in league with Democrats — even though Sondland is a top Trump donor. And another leading Trump sycophant is questioning Sondland’s credibility, something Trump himself tried to do at a rally on Thursday night.

But the new story that Trump and his loyalists are telling about Sondland is deeply flawed: It elides a mountain of evidence that’s already out there on the public record, as will be explained below.

View the complete November 15 commentary by Greg Sargent on The Washington Post website here.

Trump goes after Adam Schiff at Louisiana rally for GOP governor nominee

President’s ‘brand is winning’ so ‘losing anything, anywhere … hurts that brand,’ Republican strategist says

President Donald Trump on Thursday night used a political rally in Louisiana, billed as a late-race assist to the Republican candidate for governor, to blast the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry and insult House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff.

“While we are creating jobs and killing terrorists, the radical left — Democrats — are ripping our country apart,” he said to boos from the crowd inside the CenturyLink Center in Bossier City. He later accused Democrats of trying to “sabotage our democracy.”

Trump went after “small-necked” Schiff, trying to paint the California Democrat as physically and intellectually tiny. “What size shirt do you need?” the president said, mimicking a tailor talking to Schiff, whom Trump then said would reply: “Um, size 9.”

View the complete November 14 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

‘This is unacceptable’: Ex-congresswoman who voted to impeach Nixon says Trump is a rogue president

AlterNet logoThe public phase of the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump began Wednesday, with testimonies from two witnesses: George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, and William Taylor, a former ambassador and the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. The hearing brought forth new details about a previously unknown phone call in July between President Trump and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Both Kent and Taylor expressed concern over the role President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had in dictating U.S. policy on Ukraine. We speak with Elizabeth Holtzman, a former U.S. congressmember from New York who served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Our guest is Elizabeth Holtzman, former U.S. congresswoman from New York. She served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon. At that time, she was the youngest woman elected to Congress. Interestingly, she was replaced in that record by Congressmember Stefanik, who now serves as a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and was questioning the speakers yesterday. Liz Holtzman’s recent book is The Case for Impeaching Trump.

Liz Holtzman, welcome back to Democracy Now!

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: It’s great to be here.

View the complete November 15 article by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now on the AlterNet website here.

Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession

New York Times logoThe impeachment inquiry is the first to involve an issue of geopolitical gravity: Whether the president was undercutting American national interests — containing Russia — to bolster his campaign.

The last two impeachment investigations of the past half-century began with a third-rate burglary and an extramarital affair. They quickly expanded to question the credibility and ethics of the president, but never touched on America’s national interests in the weightiest geopolitical confrontations of their eras.

The sober, just-the-facts testimony of two previously little-known diplomats on Wednesday left no doubt that the investigation into President Trump’s actions is fundamentally different. Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

View the complete November 14 article by David E. Sanger on The New York Times website here.

White House budget official is prepared to testify on frozen Ukraine aid

Mark Sandy’s lawyer indicates he intends to testify Saturday if he receives a subpoena from lawmakers.

Mark Sandy, a senior White House budget official, is prepared to testify Saturday to House impeachment investigators about his knowledge of President Donald Trump’s decision to halt nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, his lawyer indicated Thursday.

Sandy’s lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder — who is also representing former National Security Council aide Tim Morrison — said Sandy intends to testify if he receives a subpoena from lawmakers, a step Democrats have repeatedly taken with other cooperative witnesses to sidestep orders from the White House to refuse to testify.

A series of witnesses have indicated Trump ordered a freeze on military aid in early July, just as he and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani were leaning on senior Ukrainian officials to announce investigations of Trump’s political rivals. The aid, which Ukraine depends upon to help fend off Russian military aggression in Crimea, was held until Sept. 11, despite unanimous approval from the State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon, CIA and National Security Council that it should be distributed.

View the complete November 14 article by Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Trump files to dismiss lawsuit from Bolton aide on impeachment testimony

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Thursday moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an aide to former national security adviser John Bolton who was seeking a ruling on whether he must comply with a congressional subpoena to testify in the House impeachment inquiry.

The filing to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., cited Trump’s official capacity as president. In it, he sought to have a judge dismiss White House official Dr. Charles Kupperman’s lawsuit seeking guidance on whether he should comply with the subpoena or the president’s directive not to cooperate.

A representative for Trump argued that the president’s direction should supersede any prospective court ruling.

View the complete November 14 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.