Tag: Trump impeachment

State Department inspector general slams smear campaign against employee

Washington Post logoThe State Department’s inspector general rebuked a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday, saying the aide had played a role in reassigning a staffer suspected of being disloyal to the Trump administration.

The inspector general’s report recommended that Pompeo consider disciplining Brian Hook, the point man for Iran policy. The report, however, covers Hook’s previous tenure as head of an in-house think tank known as the Policy Planning Office, located on the department’s storied seventh floor near the secretary’s office.

The report cited a chain of emails among senior officials, including Hook, and prominent conservatives, following an article in the Conservative Review that characterized a staffer in the office as a “trusted Obama aide” who had “burrowed” into the State Department during the Trump administration. She was dismissed from Hook’s staff three months early, a decision the inspector general concluded was based not on merit but on improper, inappropriate and false perceptions of her political opinions, association with the previous administration and her national origin.

View the complete November 14 article by Carol Morello on The Washington Post website here.

Fox & Friends hosts visibly deflate after legal analyst drops the hammer on Trump: ‘The law is not on the president’s side’

AlterNet logoFox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano on Thursday delivered some sobering news to the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” who did their best to spin Wednesday’s impeachment hearings as a win for President Donald Trump.

During an interview, co-host Ainsley Earhardt argued that much of the testimony given by witnesses Bill Taylor and George Kent revolved around merely their opinions of the president’s actions in withholding aid from Ukraine.

“Everybody does have their own opinion,” he acknowledged. “But… there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that the president wanted dirt on Biden and the president was willing to hold up military aid in order to get it.”

View the complete November 14 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

A second State Department official overheard Trump’s call with E.U. envoy discussing Ukraine and ‘investigations’

Washington Post logoHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that testimony presented by two career diplomats during Wednesday’s open impeachment hearing “corroborated evidence of bribery” by President Trump in his relations with Ukraine.

Her comments come as Democrats seek to build a case that Trump sought to withhold military assistance and an Oval Office meeting until Ukraine announced investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son, as well as an unfounded theory that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 presidential election to hurt Trump.

Meanwhile, it was learned Thursday that a second official from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was present when U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke on a July 26 phone call from Ukraine with Trump that more directly ties the president to his administration’s effort to pressure Ukraine’s new leadership.

View the complete November 14 article by John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez and Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Republicans’ conspiracy theories slam into sworn testimony in collision of divergent worlds

Washington Post logoThe question seemed to surprise William B. Taylor Jr., a Vietnam veteran with decades of diplomatic experience.

Couldn’t he “appreciate that President Trump was very concerned,” asked the Republican counsel, that the Ukrainians were “out to get him?”

The lawyer was referring to a conspiracy theory, popular in parts of the political right, that while Democrats have focused on Russia’s efforts to help Trump win the 2016 election, it was actually Ukraine that interfered during that campaign to help Trump’s Democratic opponent.

View the complete November 13 article by Isaac Stanley-Becker on The Washington Post website here.

Pelosi: Trump bribed Ukraine, makes Nixon’s offenses ‘look almost small’

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday accused President Trump of “bribery” in his dealings with Ukrainian leaders, linking the president’s actions to the Constitution’s impeachment clause even while emphasizing that Democrats remain undecided on whether they’ll draft impeachment articles.

“That is in the Constitution, attached to the impeachment proceedings,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol.

She then explained the basis for the charge, which stems from a whistleblower’s complaint that has since been supported by numerous government officials, that Trump leveraged U.S. military aid to Kyiv to secure political favors from Ukrainian leaders.

View the complete November 14 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Devin Nunes pushes absurd conspiracy theories about Obama and ‘nude pictures of Trump’ at impeachment hearing

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, used his time at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing to push conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump and Ukraine.

Nunes began with an opening statement which included a misleading claim that Democrats on the committee had tried to “obtain nude pictures of Trump from Russian pranksters who pretended to be Ukrainian officials,” when in fact Intel Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said he would refer the materials to the FBI.

Nunes went on to allege that the Ukraine whistleblower who reported Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “acknowledged to have a bias against President Trump” and falsely claimed that the whistleblower’s “attorney touted a ‘coup’ against the president,” when the attorney was actually referring to former acting Attorney General Sally Yates being fired for standing up to Trump in 2017.

View the complete November 14 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Hearing room bursts into laugher as Democrat calls Rep. Jim Jordan’s bluff on ‘hearsay’

AlterNet logoRepublicans at today’s impeachment hearing, featuring the testimony of George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Bill Taylor, the senior U.S. envoy to Ukraine, have unveiled a plethora of odd defenses of Donald Trump. They range from “I’M YELLING SO YOU KNOW I’M SERIOUS” to slipping in unsupported conspiracy theories, and most importantly, calling the testimony of these two professional career diplomats nothing more than “hearsay.” Over and over again, we’ve heard them object to these two witnesses because they did not have direct conversations with Trump.

Rep. Peter Welch had quite enough of that nonsense, and as he took his turn at the microphone, he called their bluff, saying, “I say to my colleague, I would be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.”

It was an extraordinary moment that drew big laughter in the room.

View the complete November 13 article by Jen Hayden from Daily Kos  on the AlterNet website here.

GOP senators balk at lengthy impeachment trial

The Hill logoSenators are pushing for a speedy impeachment trial as the proceedings appear poised to spill into 2020. 

With House Democrats aiming to vote on articles of impeachment by Christmas, Republicans view a trial as all but guaranteed but are warning they don’t want to drag it out. 

How long a trial could last is a rolling point of debate. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) raised eyebrows by suggesting it could last six to eight weeks, longer than the proceedings against former President Clinton, which lasted just over a month.

View the complete November 14 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Ousted ambassador gives deeply personal account of firing by Trump

Yovanovitch describes feeling ‘shocked and devastated’ reading transcript of Trump call with Ukrainian president

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was removed from her post by President Donald Trump, spent much of her Friday morning before the House Intelligence Committee disputing allegations that she worked against the president while in her post in Kyiv.

Yovanovitch told the committee that she never told U.S. embassy employees to ignore Washington’s orders because Trump would soon be impeached, that she did not work on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, and that she has never spoken with Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, whom Trump wanted Kyiv to investigate for his lucrative role at a Ukrainian gas company.

“Partisanship of this type is not compatible with the role of a career Foreign Service Officer,” Yovanovitch said during the second day of public impeachment hearings focusing on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

View the complete November 15 article by Patrick Kelley and Katherine Tully-McManus on The Roll Call website here.

Ambassador’s cellphone call to Trump from Kyiv restaurant was a stunning breach of security, former officials say

Washington Post logoA U.S. ambassador’s cellphone call to President Trump from a restaurant in the capital of Ukraine this summer was a stunning breach of security, exposing the conversation to surveillance by foreign intelligence services, including Russia’s, former U.S. officials said.

The call — in which Trump’s remarks were overheard by a U.S. Embassy staffer in Kyiv — was disclosed Wednesday by the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., on the dramatic opening day of public impeachment hearings into alleged abuse of power by the president.

“The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone” asking U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about “the investigations,” Taylor testified, referring to the president’s desire for a probe of the son of Trump’s potential political opponent in 2020, Joe Biden, and the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden once served.

View the complete November 13 article by Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.