Tag: Ukraine

Rick Perry dances toward the exits

The energy secretary and “Three Amigos” member is leaving his post under a Ukraine-sized cloud. But what has he accomplished?

He didn’t resign under fire for making sweetheart apartment deals with lobbyists, engaging in dodgy real estate development plans or racking up more than $1 million in taxpayer-funded flights. So by those standards, Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s tenure as a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet could count as a relative success.

Perry leaves office Sunday receiving generally high marks from both Republicans and Democrats for his nearly three years of running the Energy Department — an agency whose name he famously forgot during his “oops” moment in a 2011 presidential debate. But he is also leaving under a cloud as one of the “Three Amigos” whose intervention in Ukraine’s energy politics led to the House impeachment probe of Trump.

As secretary, Perry eagerly served as DOE’s top booster, praising its scientific prowess and reassuring lawmakers that he would follow their spending instructions rather than push the White House’s proposed budget slashing. At the same time, he had a spotty record at best in pursuing the “energy abundance” agenda that Trump appointed him to champion, including several failed stabs at reviving the coal industry.

View the complete November 30 article by Ben LeFebvre, Gavin Bade, Eric Wolff and Anthony Adragna on the Politico website here.

The complicated web of Ukraine-focused relationships that has Giuliani at its center

Washington Post logoAt some point about a year ago, two groups found each other. One was made up of then-current or former Ukrainian officials looking for job security or redemption. The other was a collection of American lawyers and their associates, looking for political and financial benefit. At the forefront of that latter group was former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who by 2018 was duly employed as a personal lawyer to President Trump.

In recent weeks, the remarkable scope of the interplay of these two groups has become more apparent, thanks to news reports about their interactions and a willingness of one Giuliani associate to begin hinting about what he knows. That associate, Lev Parnas, has good reason to make clear how much he knows: Facing federal campaign-finance charges, he’s eager to give prosecutors justification for cutting a deal.

The upshot, though, is that we now have a much better sense of what Giuliani and his associates were alleged to be doing during a period in which the former mayor was also helping effect Trump’s pressure campaign on the Ukrainian government. We’ve compiled recent reports to give a sense of how Giuliani and his allies were quietly working with those Ukrainian officials.

View the complete November 28 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Two OMB officials resigned in part over concerns about Ukraine aid hold, official testifies

Washington Post logoMark Sandy, a career official at the White House Office of Management and Budget, revealed the resignations in testimony to impeachment investigators

Two officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget recently resigned in part over concerns about the holdup on Ukraine aid, a career employee of the agency told impeachment investigators, according to a transcript of his testimony released Tuesday.

Mark Sandy, the only OMB official to testify in the impeachment inquiry, did not name the employees in question. He said one worked in the OMB legal division and described that person as having a “dissenting opinion” about how the security assistance to Ukraine could be held up in light of the Impoundment Control Act, which limits the ability of the executive branch to change spending decisions made by Congress.

Sandy, the agency’s deputy associate director for national security programs, testified on Nov. 16, and his remarks revealed some of the White House’s internal maneuverings relating to blocking the aid. Other White House officials, including Sandy’s superiors at the budget office who are political appointees, have defied congressional subpoenas to participate in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

View the complete November 26 article by Erica Werner and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

House Judiciary schedules first impeachment hearing, invites Trump

Hearing to review constitutional grounds for drafting articles of impeachment

The House Judiciary Committee has invited President Donald Trump to participate in a hearing next week on the constitutional justification for impeachment.

Chairman Jerrold Nadler announced that his panel will hold its first impeachment hearing at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 4. The New York Democrat also wrote to the president asking if he intends to participate either personally or through his attorneys, pursuant to the House resolution that set the ground rules for the impeachment process.

“If you would like to participate in the hearing, please provide the Committee with notice as soon as possible, but no later than by 6:00 pm on December 1, 2019. By that time, I ask that you also indicate who will act as your counsel for these proceedings,” Nadler wrote.

View the complete November 26 article by Niels Lesniewski and Katherine Tully-McManus on The Roll Call website here.

‘Jaw-Dropping’: Lawyers Blast Giuliani Over Alleged Dealings With Ukraine Oligarch

Rudy Giuliani’s name has come up many times during the public testimony for the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, often confirming that in Ukraine, the Trump attorney and former New York City mayor aggressively pushed for an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. And some more information about Giuliani surfaced on Monday, when the New York Times reported that Dmitri Firtash — a Ukrainian oligarch facing criminal charges in the U.S. — had told the publication that Giuliani and two of his associates (Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman) offered to use their U.S. Justice Department connections to help him. And in return, Firtash alleged, they wanted dirt on the Bidens.

Firtash, according to the Times, alleged that when he met with Parnas and Fruman in June, they offered to help him and wanted him to hire attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing — both Trump supporters — to represent him.

On Twitter, Giuliani has flatly denied Firtash’s allegation — posting, “I did not ask anyone to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and certainly not with Dimitry Firtash, who I have never met or talked to.”

View the complete November 25 article by Alex Henderson from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of broad probe

Washington Post logoThe federal investigation into two associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani is exploring a wide range of potential crimes — including wire fraud and failure to register as a foreign agent — as prosecutors dig into the pair’s interactions with the president’s personal lawyer and the main pro-Trump super PAC, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Giuliani’s dealings with the two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, are being investigated by federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. That office has already filed campaign finance charges against Parnas and Fruman, accusing them of conspiracy and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.

According to people familiar with the ongoing case, investigators are scrutinizing Giuliani’s consulting business and eyeing donations made to America First Action, the main pro-Trump super PAC set up by his advisers and allies after his election, as well as its affiliated nonprofit group.

View the complete November 25 article by Devlin Barrett, Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers: Nixon ‘never admitted his crimes — Trump announced his in public’

AlterNet logoFollowing a week of public impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee, renowned public broadcast journalist Bill Moyers on Friday expressed alarm at President Donald Trump’s attacks on the witnesses who came forward to inform the public about the president’s misconduct in office—and the complicity of top administration officials.

“For President Trump to vigorously denigrate them, to malign them, with [Trump’s personal attorney Rudy] Giuliani leading a smear campaign against these fine public servants, is disgusting, it’s repulsive, it’s abominable,” Moyers said in an interview with MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes late Friday.

As Common Dreams reported, Trump tweeted attacks on former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as she testified last Friday, sparking accusations of “witness intimidation in real time.”

View the complete November 24 article by Jake Johnson from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.

House GOP disregards expert warnings that debunked Ukraine theory helps Russia

CNN — Expert after expert in the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump testified about one key fact: That Ukraine had no role interfering in the 2016 elections to help Hillary Clinton. And one key witness sounded the alarm even louder.

“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” said Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, in testimony that reflects what US intelligence officials have privately told lawmakers in recent months.

But to House Republicans, that’s all just a bunch of talk.

View the complete November 22 article by Manu Raju, Jeremy Herb and Zachary Cohen on the CNN website here.

Watch: Eric Swalwell calls out Devin Nunes’ own ties to the Ukraine scandal to his face

AlterNet logoRep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif, called out Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., on Thursday over his links to an indicted associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani who assisted with the effort to pressure Ukraine into launching investigations to help President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

Swalwell cited a Daily Beast report that Giuliani business partner Lev Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings in Europe while the former House Intelligence Committee chairman led an investigation seeking to undermine former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia at Thursday’s impeachment hearing.

His comments came after Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, hit out at Republicans on the committee who have pushed a conspiracy theory welcomed by Trump that Ukraine framed Russia in the 2016 election meddling case, which she said “clearly advance[d] Russian interests.”“Dr. Hill, you cautioned us on the dangers of members of this committee perhaps peddling any Ukrainian conspiracy theories that could benefit Russia,” Swalwell said. “I want to ask you if you’ve heard the name Lev Parnas, of Ukraine, someone in this investigation who was influencing President Trump and Rudy Giuliani about some of the debunked conspiracy theories you referenced,” he added, referring to a baseless George Soros-linked conspiracy theory that led to the ouster of former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

View the complete November 22 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

New York Times logoMoscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.

The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative.” She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.

In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.

View the complete November 22 article by Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg on The New York Times website here.