Tag: Ukraine

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.

The Ukraine scandal is testing the limits of the conservative media spin operation

These days, the conservative news media ecosystem generally works like this: a constellation of fringe websites churns out heavily skewed stories that either misinterpret or fabricate information in order to create narratives that defend President Trump’s reported misconduct. If those same stories can accuse his opponents of an unfounded conspiracy theory, all the better.

The stories then make their way to Fox News’s prime-time opinion shows. From there, they’re disseminated through a vast network of television talking heads, elected officials, and right-wing content aggregators — finally landing themselves on the president’s Twitter feed. Rinse, repeat. Continue reading “The Ukraine scandal is testing the limits of the conservative media spin operation”

A Failure Of Imagination: Why We Missed Trump’s Ukraine Plotting

Try for a moment to imagine the world as it was a week ago. Before we knew that President Donald Trump put the squeeze on another country to investigate his political opponent, before we knew he wanted to involve the attorney general, or that aid may have been held up in the plotting.

Except, we did know each of those things. The president hasn’t been quiet about what he’s up to. And while we didn’t know many details, much of the hanky-panky has been happening right before our eyes.

Let’s review a few facts.

View the complete September 30 article by Eric Umansky from ProPublica on the National Memo 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.

Former Ukraine prosecutor says he saw no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s former top law enforcement official says he repeatedly rebuffed demands by President Trump’s personal lawyer to investigate Joe Biden and his son, insisting he had seen no evidence of wrongdoing that he could pursue.

In an interview, Yuri Lutsenko said while he was Ukraine’s prosecutor general he told Rudolph W. Giuliani that he would be happy to cooperate if the FBI or other U.S. authorities began their own investigation of the former vice president and his son Hunter but insisted they had not broken any Ukrainian laws to his knowledge.

Lutsenko, who was fired as prosecutor general last month, said he had urged Giuliani to launch a U.S. inquiry and go to court if he had any evidence but not to use Ukraine to conduct a political vendetta that could affect the U.S. election.

View the complete September 29 article by Tracy Wilkinson and Sergei L. Loiko on The Los Angeles Times website here.

U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker resigns

Axios logoU.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker resigned on Friday, 1 day after the whistleblower report on President Trump and Ukraine was released, Arizona State University’s student newspaper first reported and outlets including CNN confirm.

Why it matters: The whistleblower at the heart of a controversy over Trump and Ukraine said that Volker, along with U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, met with Ukrainian officials a day after Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the whistleblower, Volker and Sondland provided Ukrainian officials with advice on how to “navigate” Trump’s demands.

    • Volker is scheduled for a deposition on Oct.3 as part of the House impeachment inquiry and committee investigations into whether Trump jeopardized national security by pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate political rival Joe Biden.
    • Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson found the whistleblower complaint to be credible.

View the complete September 27 article by Orion Rummler on the Axios website here.

Trump calls on Schiff to ‘immediately resign’ over his portrayal of Trump’s call with Zelenskiy

President says longtime thorn in his side tried to ‘defraud the American Public’ in Thursday hearing

Donald Trump on Friday called for House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff to resign over his portrayal of Trump’s message to Ukraine’s president in their phone call that the president called an attempt to “defraud the American public.”

Schiff has long been a thorn in Trump’s side and now Speaker Nancy Pelosi has placed him in charge of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, which is centered on the July 25 telephone conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskiy. During the call, Trump asks Zelenskiy for a “favor” after the incoming Ukrainian leader noted his intention to purchase more U.S.-made military hardware. That favor was Trump’s desire for an investigation of 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden.

During a Thursday hearing about an intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint about that call and White House aides’ coordinated effort to “lock down” the records, Schiff kicked off the hearing by summarizing Trump’s request of Zelenskiy, saying what he was about to recount was “the essence of what the president communicates.”

View the complete September 27 article by John T. Bennet on The Roll Call website here.

Timeline: The alarming pattern of actions by Trump included in whistleblower allegations

Washington Post logoSix weeks after it was submitted, a complaint from an intelligence community whistleblower has been declassified and released publicly. The seven-page document details a series of actions, meetings and conversations over a months-long period in which President Trump and his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to encourage an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden by officials in Ukraine.

Part of the complaint centers on a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a rough transcript of which was released Wednesday. The whistleblower complaint, filed more than a month earlier, accurately captures the content of that call, lending validity to the rest of the assertions in the complaint.

With that in mind, we’ve pulled out the significant dates mentioned in the whistleblower complaint to give a sense of how the effort by Trump and Giuliani to elicit an investigation in Ukraine unfolded. Events not included in the whistleblower complaint itself are in italics. All quotes are from the whistleblower complaint.

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

The Founders Would Have Impeached Trump for His Ukraine-Related Misconduct

Center for American Progress logoFrom the very first days of our nation, the founders were intent on ensuring that foreign entities did not influence America’s democratic system. They knew that foreign involvement in U.S. elections or policymaking posed an enormous threat to our sovereignty and that a president who would invite foreign interference for his own political benefit would be subject to impeachment. They would have been horrified at President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to help dig up dirt on a potential political rival.

The founders tackled many important issues during our nation’s formative years, but one of the paramount concerns during their debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was their intense concern about foreign interference in American politics. Their concern was animated by the corrupting effects that foreign governments or foreign persons could have on elected officials, including the president. Continue reading “The Founders Would Have Impeached Trump for His Ukraine-Related Misconduct”

Watch: Devin Nunes attempt to defend Trump backfires after president’s acting intel chief slaps down his question

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) tried to get acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to go along with his nefarious theory about the intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint against President Donald Trump — but it massively backfired when the acting DNI wouldn’t play ball.

During an exchange with Maguire, Nunes pointed out that most intelligence community whistleblower complaints do not get aired out in public as they have been for the past two weeks like the one levied against the president.

“Are you aware of any cases like this that were put into the spotlight?” Nunes asked. “Would this be the way to handle it out in the public like this?”

Maguire admitted that he did not know of any other cases that had been handled like this — but then slapped down the entire premise of Nunes’s question.

View the complete September 26 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.