Tag: Trump quid pro quo

Sondland acknowledges Ukraine quid pro quo, implicates Trump, Pence, Pompeo and others

Washington Post logoA U.S. ambassador on Wednesday explicitly linked President Trump, Vice President Pence and other senior officials to what he came to believe was a campaign to pressure a foreign government to investigate Trump’s political rival in exchange for a coveted White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid.

The potentially historic, if hotly disputed, testimony from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is the most damaging yet for Trump in Congress’s intensifying inquiry into whether the president should be impeached.

More forcefully than he has before, Sondland declared that the Trump administration would not give Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a chance to visit the White House — unless Zelensky agreed to announce investigations that could help the president politically.

View the complete November 20 article by Rachael Bade, Aaron C. Davis and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Nunes blasted for nonsensical opening statement at impeachment hearing: ‘Seems unlikely’ GOP knew Sondland would affirm Trump’s ‘quid pro quo’

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes of California has been one of President Donald Trump’s loudest, most strident defenders during the public impeachment hearings — and with Ambassador Gordon Sondland preparing to testify Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes was as bombastic as usual. During his opening statement, Nunes ranted about Democrats linking Trump to Russian interference in the 2016 election, insisted that Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was perfectly innocent, declared that Sondland was “here today to be smeared” by Democrats, and even said that today’s Democrats would have impeached President George Washington if given the chance.

But Nunes’ critics have been pushing back on the congressman’s opening statements, noting that he plays hard and loose with the facts — and appeared unprepared for Sondland’s remarks.

On Wednesday morning, CNBC’s Christina Wilkie tweeted, “Nunes’ opening statement suggests Intel Republicans didn’t know (Ambassador) Sondland was flipping until the last minute, and Nunes didn’t have time to update his opening statement — to which Alex Thomas responded, “Yeah, the reaction I’m getting from everybody on the Hill right now is ‘Nunes read the wrong opening statement.’”

View the November 20 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Acting ambassador says it was his ‘clear understanding’ U.S. military aid would not be sent until Ukraine pursued investigations that could help Trump

Washington Post logoHouse investigators released a transcript Wednesday of the closed-door testimony of William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, who told lawmakers that it was his “clear understanding” that U.S. military aid would not be sent until that country pursued investigations that could politically benefit President Trump.

The impeachment inquiry moved forward on other fronts, with House Democrats announcing that the first public hearings would be held next week and David Hale, the State Department’s third-ranking official, testifying privately at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Democrats hope Hale can shed more light on the removal of Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine after she became the target of false rumors questioning her loyalty to Trump.

View the complete November 6 article by John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez and Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

The apparent quid pro quo sitting just outside the rough transcript

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has a new refrain that he seems to think proves his innocence on any questions about his interactions with Ukraine. “Read the transcript!” he says to reporters, to people at his rallies and to his Twitter followers. Look at what Trump himself said in that July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and you’ll know that everything is on the up-and-up.

Setting aside the immediate problem with that request — namely, that the transcript is an incomplete approximation of the call — Trump’s suggestion suffers from another problem, too. Taking the rough transcript by itself removes all of the context that surrounds the call, what Zelensky knew coming into the conversation and what Trump and his team had been doing to force Zelensky to launch new investigations that could be politically useful to the president. Saying “read the transcript” is a bit like asking people to judge Watergate by reading the arrest report from the hotel break-in.

Particularly because there’s one little-noticed effort to pressure Zelensky sitting just outside the boundaries of that call, an effort that relates directly to what Zelensky offered and that occurred immediately before the call took place.

View the complete November 6 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Trump makes falsehoods central to impeachment defense as incriminating evidence mounts

Washington Post logoStanding before a crowd of supporters this week in Lexington, Ky., President Trump repeated a false claim he has made more than 100 times in the past six weeks: that a whistleblower from the intelligence community misrepresented a presidential phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry that threatens his presidency.

“The whistleblower said lots of things that weren’t so good, folks. You’re going to find out,” Trump said Monday at a campaign rally. “These are very dishonest people.”

Behind him were men and women in “Read the Transcript” T-shirts — echoing through their apparel Trump’s attempt to recast an incriminating summary of his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president as a piece of exonerating evidence.

View the complete November 6 article by Toluse Olorunnipa and Philip Rucker on The Washington Post website here.

Trump insisted that the rough transcript of his Zelensky conversation left nothing out. He might have ‘set the trap for himself’ by doing so

AlterNet logoThe word “rough” has often been used to describe the transcript of President Donald Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump, however, has insisted that it was a full transcript of the conversation. And Washington Post reporter Philip Bump, in an October 30 article, explains why Trump might have “set the trap for himself” by doing so.

The bottom of the page of the transcript, Bump notes, states that the missive is “not a verbatim transcript of a discussion.” But on October 11, Trump insisted that it was “an exact transcript of my call, done by very talented people that do this.”

Trump also claimed, “The transcript is a perfect transcript. There shouldn’t be any further questions.”

View the complete October 30 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Republicans are clearly spooked as the most dangerous witness in Trump’s impeachment speaks to Congress

AlterNet logoEver since texts from the behind-the-scenes State Department efforts to induce Ukraine into investigating President Donald Trump’s political opponents were released, it’s been clear that the House’s impeachment inquiry desperately needed to hear from acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor.

While much of what is publicly known about the Trump administration’s machinations with Ukraine is already impeachable, texts sent by Taylor, first provided to the House by U.S. envoy Kurt Volker, showed an even darker scheme at work. And they also suggested that Taylor, of all the people involved in the efforts, was most alarmed about and willing to speak out with regard to Trump’s wrongdoing. In one particularly memorable text, Taylor told another official of Trump’s Ukraine plot: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” This implicated the president directly in criminal, and undoubtedly impeachable, activity.

With Taylor set to appear at a closed session of Congress on Tuesday, expectations for his testimony were high. And while his comments have not yet been made public as of this writing, Democrats were already sending strong indications that his testimony was explosive, with one lawmaker calling it “incredibly damaging to the president.”

View the complete October 22 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.