Tag: Trump White House

Trump involved Pence in efforts to pressure Ukraine’s leader, though officials say vice president was unaware of allegations in whistleblower complaint

Washington Post logoPresident Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.

Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May — an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar — when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.

Months later, the president used Pence to tell Zelensky that U.S. aid was still being withheld while demanding more aggressive action on corruption, officials said. At that time — following Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenksy — the Ukrainians probably understood action on corruption to include the investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

View the complete October 2 article by Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe and Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

House Democrats threaten to subpoena White House for Ukraine docs

The Hill logoHouse Democrats are threatening to subpoena the White House for documents on President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine as part of their impeachment inquiry, with three House panels signaling Wednesday they plan to move forward with the effort unless they get the material.
The move represents the latest battle between the White House and Democrats, and came amid clashing rhetoric Wednesday, with Democrats accusing Trump of potential obstruction of justice and the president accusing the opposition party of seeking to damage the country.
“Over the past several weeks, the Committees tried several times to obtain voluntary compliance with our requests for documents, but the White House has refused to engage with—or even respond to—the Committees,” reads a memo from House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)

View the complete October 2 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

‘Caught red handed’: Pompeo thought he was acting tough by releasing letter attacking House Dems. It hasn’t gone well

AlterNet logoU.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under fire after responding to a letter from the House Foreign Affairs Committee requesting State Dept. officials sit for depositions as they build an impeachment case against his boss, President Donald Trump.

Pompeo, currently in Italy with former Trump White House official, conspiracy theorist (and alleged neo-Nazi) Sebastian Gorka, working to subvert more than a dozen CIA and FBI investigations into President Trump, decided strong-arm the Democrats. Attorney General Bill Barr was there last week on the same mission, and it was not his first time doing so.

The Secretary, despite having no legal standing or basis to do so, banned his officials from being deposed. And he falsely accused Democrats of trying to “intimidate” and “bully” State Dept. officials.

View the complete October 2 article by David Badash from The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Pompeo confirms he was on Trump’s Ukraine call Mike Pompeo in Italy.

Axios logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed during a press conference in Rome Wednesday that he was on the line during the July phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Why it matters: Pompeo had previously been coy about his role in the call, giving ABC News’ Martha Raddatz an evasive answer when she asked him directly about the call last week: “You just gave me a report about an IC whistleblower complaint — none of which I’ve seen.”

The big picture: Pompeo’s confirmation ties the State Department more closely to House Democrats’ ongoing impeachment inquiry and comes a day after he accused Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee of “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly” State Department officials who have been asked to take part in a series of depositions for the Trump-Ukraine investigation.

    • It also comes the same day that the State Department’s inspector general requested an “urgent” meeting with a number of House and Senate committees “to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine.”

View the complete October 2 article by Jacob Knutson on the Axios website here.

House Democrats subpoena Giuliani for Ukraine documents

The Hill logoHouse Democrats on Monday subpoenaed President Trump‘s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as part of their investigation into the president’s efforts to get the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

The chairmen of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees asked Giuliani to hand over documents by Oct. 15.

“Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena, including at the direction or behest of the president or the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against you and the president,” the chairmen warned in a letter to Giuliani.

View the complete September 30 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

John Bolton has finally spoken, and he put up a big warning sign about Trump and North Korea

Washington Post logoJohn Bolton spoke Monday in his first big public appearance since his acrimonious split with President Trump three weeks ago.

And while Bolton didn’t weigh in on the growing Ukraine scandal, he did rebuke the Trump administration over one of its central foreign policy initiatives: the pursuit of a nuclear deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Appearing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Bolton declined to directly address things that had occurred during his time in the White House. But he made few bones about his concerns surrounding Trump’s continued pursuit of the elusive deal.

Bolton set the tone by noting early on that he was about to speak about North Korea in “unvarnished terms” and suggested that Kim was happy to see him outside the White House. Bolton then suggested that the negotiations between the two sides were very likely to be fruitless.

View the complete September 30 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Was Repeatedly Warned That Ukraine Conspiracy Theory Was ‘Completely Debunked’

New York Times logoThomas P. Bossert, President Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said he was “deeply disturbed” that Mr. Trump had urged Ukraine to investigate Democrats.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was repeatedly warned by his own staff that the Ukraine conspiracy theory that he and his lawyer were pursuing was “completely debunked” long before the president pressed Ukraine this summer to investigate his Democratic rivals, a former top adviser said on Sunday.

Thomas P. Bossert, who served as Mr. Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said he told the president there was no basis to the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election and did so on behalf of the Democrats. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Bossert said he was “deeply disturbed” that Mr. Trump nonetheless tried to get Ukraine’s president to produce damaging information about Democrats.

Mr. Bossert’s comments, on the ABC program “This Week” and in a subsequent telephone interview, underscored the danger to the president as the House moves ahead with an inquiry into whether he abused his power for political gain. Other former aides to Mr. Trump said on Sunday that he refused to accept reassurances about Ukraine no matter how many times it was explained to him, instead subscribing to an unsubstantiated narrative that has now brought him to the brink of impeachment.

View the complete September 29 article by Shery Gay Stolberg, Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker on The New York Times website here.

Chris Wallace Shoots Down Stephen Miller’s Claim Whistleblower Is Part of ‘Deep State’

“This individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government,” White House policy adviser said

“This is a deep state operative, pure and simple,” White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace in an attempt to characterize as partisan the whistleblower who came forward following President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president asking him to dig up dirt on his political rival.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the media continues to describe this individual as a whistleblower, an honorific that this individual most certainly does not deserve. A partisan hit job does not make you a whistleblower just because you go through the Whistleblower Protection Act,” Miller said.

Then Wallace cut to video of the Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testifying before Congress that the whistleblower and the Inspector General have “acted in good faith throughout” and have done everything “by the book and followed the law.”

View the complete September 29 article by Peter Wade on The Rolling Stone website here.

George Conway posts epic tweetstorm obliterating Lindsey Graham’s ‘pure garbage’ defense of Trump

AlterNet logoJoining with other lawyers and prosecutors who jumped all over Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for his claim that “hearsay” evidence could not be used against Donald Trump in an impeachment trial, conservative lawyer George Conway harshly brought the Trump defender up to speed on case law.

Then he called Graham’s claim “pure garbage.”

After Graham used Twitter to attempt to dismiss a whistleblower’s complaint against the president since he didn’t hear Trump’s overture to the president of Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden firsthand, prosecutors weighed in by invoking former President Bill Clintons’ impeachment where hearsay testimony was a central feature.

View the complete September 29 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

How the White House and Justice learned about whistleblower

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and the Justice Department learned about a CIA officer’s concerns about President Donald Trump around the same time the individual filed a whistleblower complaint that is now at the center of an impeachment inquiry, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter.

The new details help flesh out the timeline of how alarm bells about Trump’s call with the Ukraine leader, in which he pressed for an investigation of a political rival, reverberated across the U.S. government and inside the upper ranks of its intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The details are fueling objections by Democratic lawmakers that the administration stonewalled them for weeks about the phone call and took extraordinary measures to suppress it from becoming public.

The intelligence official initially filed a complaint about Trump’s Ukraine dealings with the CIA, which then alerted the White House and the Justice Department. On Aug. 12, the official raised a separate flag, this time with the intelligence community’s inspector general, a process that granted the individual more legal “whistleblower” protection.

View the complete September 27 article by Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Zeke Miller on the Associated Press website here.