Tag: Ukraine

Impeachment news roundup: Nov. 22

Trump explains why he wanted Giuliani to lead Ukraine effort, and where does the inquiry go next?

The House left town for its Thanksgiving recess on Thursday with little clarity on where the impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump goes from here.

After two weeks of public hearings with 12 witnesses, Democratic Intelligence Committee members have not said whether they will call more to testify after the Thanksgiving break.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the course impeachment takes is “up to the committees of jurisdiction.” But she also suggested that her party will not wait for the courts to decide whether Trump administration officials who have refused to provide documents and testimony to the panel conducting the impeachment probe must comply. That court process could take months, and Democrats have said they want to wrap up the impeachment process by as early as Christmas.

View the complete November 22 article on The Roll Call website here.

Adam Schiff summarizes Trump’s Ukraine Plan with just 7 Words

AlterNet logoIn case you missed it, Adam Schiff closed out the pivotal day with one memorable theme, regarding Trump’s action with respect to Ukraine:

“That’s not anti-corruption, that is corruption.”

He repeated the theme again and again, citing one Trump ‘high crime’ after another to illustrate his refrain.

View the complete November 21 article by Sarah Toce on the AlterNet website here.

Trump dismisses Sondland testimony, says impeachment inquiry should be ‘over’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday said that he didn’t know U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland “very well” and that Sondland’s ongoing testimony Wednesday means that the House impeachment inquiry should be “over.”

Reading from a packet of notes, Trump reenacted a conversation he had with Sondland that was described in testimony, with the president saying he wanted “nothing” from Ukraine in exchange for investigations.

“That means it’s all over. What do you want from Ukraine, he asks me, screaming. What do you want from Ukraine? I keep seeing all these ideas and theories,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House for a trip to Austin, Texas, providing his account of Sondland’s part of the conversation.

View the complete November 20 article by  Morgan Chalfant on The Hill  website here.

Impeachment news roundup: Nov. 20

Testimony from Laura Cooper contradicts Republican argument that Ukraine did not know about the hold on security aid

Deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia and Ukraine Laura Cooper told the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday evening that Ukrainian Embassy staff in August were aware of the White House’s hold on military assistance to Kyiv.

Cooper’s testimony ran counter to a key Republican argument about the July phone call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and President Donald Trump — that Ukraine did not know about the hold on security aid.

She told lawmakers that her staff received an inquiry from the Ukranian Embassy asking about the status of the funds on the afternoon of July 25. On a phone call earlier that morning, Trump had asked Zelenskiy to pursue investigations into Burisma and, in turn, the Bidens.

View the complete November 20 article on The Roll Call website here.

Trump Says Founders Never Wanted Congress To Impeach A President

Donald Trump complained on Tuesday that America’s founders didn’t want presidents to be impeached, going so far as to say it is something they “never thought possible.” Trump’s comments came just before he presided over a Cabinet meeting.

“It’s a scam,” Trump said of the House impeachment inquiry. “They’re doing something that the founders never thought possible, and the founders didn’t want. And they’re using this impeachment hoax for their own political gain to try and damage the Republican Party and damage the president.”

Trump falsely claims that the impeachment hearings “have had the opposite effect,” saying with no evidence that “I’m the highest I’ve ever been in the polls.” In fact, a recent poll showed the majority of Americans support impeaching Trump, and his average approval rating continues to hover at just 41 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight.

View the complete November 19 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

Sondland Kept Pompeo Informed on Ukraine Pressure Campaign

New York Times logoThe diplomat at the center of the impeachment inquiry looped in the secretary of state at key moments as American officials pushed for investigations sought by President Trump.

WASHINGTON — Gordon D. Sondland, the diplomat at the center of the House impeachment inquiry, kept Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apprised of key developments in the campaign to pressure Ukraine’s leader into public commitments that would satisfy President Trump, two people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Sondland informed Mr. Pompeo in mid-August about a draft statement that Mr. Sondland and another American diplomat had worked on with the Ukrainians that they hoped would persuade Mr. Trump to grant Ukraine’s new president the Oval Office meeting he was seeking, the people said.

Later that month, Mr. Sondland discussed with Mr. Pompeo the possibility of pushing the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to pledge during a planned meeting with Mr. Trump in Warsaw that he would take the steps being sought by Mr. Trump as a way to break the logjam in relations between the two countries, the people said.

View the complete November 20 article by Michael S. Schmidt on The New York Times website here.

7 takeaways from Tuesday’s impeachment hearings

Washington Post logoAfter three witnesses last week painted a broad picture of a U.S. foreign policy hijacked by political interests, this week the impeachment inquiry into President Trump began with testimony Tuesday from four people who serve inside the White House and on the front lines of U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.

Tuesday’s hearings featured:

Continue reading “7 takeaways from Tuesday’s impeachment hearings”

Impeachment witness says Ukraine ‘gradually came to understand’ Trump’s desired investigation was tied to aid, meeting

Washington Post logoA counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine told lawmakers last week that he was shocked to overhear a phone call in which a top diplomat assured President Trump that Ukrainian officials would pursue an investigation of interest to the U.S. commander in chief — a probe that the diplomat later suggested was of former vice president Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival.

The counselor, David Holmes, also testified that the Ukrainians “gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something in exchange” for a White House meeting or military aid, which was held back as the president and his allies pressed for the Biden investigation, according to a transcript of his testimony released Monday.

Democrats released the transcript of Holmes’s testimony — along with that of another diplomatic official, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale — as they kicked off what will be perhaps the most intense week yet of their impeachment inquiry into whether Trump sought to engage the Ukrainians in a corrupt bargain to help him get reelected.

View the complete November 18 article by Matt Zapotosky, Karoun Demirjian, Ellen Nakashima and Elise Viebeck on The Washington Post website here.

Impeachment witness: Ukraine ‘gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something’

The Hill logoA State Department staffer told House lawmakers last week that he believed officials in Ukraine “gradually came to understand that they were being asked to do something” in order for a hold on security assistance from the U.S. to be lifted, according to a transcript released by House Democrats on Monday evening.

David Holmes, a career State Department official now based in Kyiv who is slated to testify publicly later this week, also told lawmakers that he had “never seen anything like” the phone call he overheard between President Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in July. 

“This was an extremely distinctive experience in my Foreign Service career. I’ve never seen anything like this, someone calling the President from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful language. There’s just so much about the call that was so remarkable that I remember it vividly,” Holmes told investigators, according to the transcript.

View the complete November 18 article by Morgan Chalfant, Brett Samuels and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

What is an oligarch?

With the impeachment hearings for President Donald Trump under way, several American diplomats and ambassadors have testified about the influence of oligarchs on the Trump administration.

I am a scholar of international law who has been working in the Soviet and post-Soviet space since the early 1990s. As the impeachment hearings in Washington take center stage and talk turns to the politics of Ukraine, I believe it’s important to understand what oligarchs are and what power they wield.

The history of oligarchs

Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle coined the term oligarchy as he contemplated the forms of state governance.

View the complete November 15 article by Joel Samuels, Professor of Law, University of South Carolina, on the Conversation website here.