Tag: Ukraine

Pelosi: Trump bribed Ukraine, makes Nixon’s offenses ‘look almost small’

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday accused President Trump of “bribery” in his dealings with Ukrainian leaders, linking the president’s actions to the Constitution’s impeachment clause even while emphasizing that Democrats remain undecided on whether they’ll draft impeachment articles.

“That is in the Constitution, attached to the impeachment proceedings,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol.

She then explained the basis for the charge, which stems from a whistleblower’s complaint that has since been supported by numerous government officials, that Trump leveraged U.S. military aid to Kyiv to secure political favors from Ukrainian leaders.

View the complete November 14 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

New testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign

Washington Post logoAfter weeks in which President Trump’s top aides have figured as the major players in the Ukraine narrative, testimony in the first few hours of the public impeachment hearings Wednesday thrust Trump himself back to center stage.

Acting ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. told lawmakers about a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents: a phone conversation he said Trump had with a top U.S. diplomat asking about the status of “the investigations.”

The phone conversation described by Taylor gave Democrats a chance to renew questions about Trump’s personal involvement in the effort to push Ukraine to investigate his political opponents while the United States withheld security assistance and a sought-after White House meeting.

View the complete November 13 article by Elise Viebeck on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats announce public impeachment hearings with eight witnesses next week

The Hill logoHouse Democrats on Tuesday announced a spate of additional hearings for next week as part of the public phase of their impeachment inquiry as they seek to make the case that President Trump pressured a foreign government for his political benefit.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the committee expected to hear on Tuesday from key witnesses such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (NSC), and Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Pence. The panel also plans to hear from Kurt Volker, former special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, a top NSC official.

Schiff said on Wednesday that lawmakers plan to hear from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who revised his testimony to say he believed the president “likely” conditioned nearly $400 million in aid to opening such probes. Later that afternoon, they will hear from top Defense official Laura Cooper, who testified about decisions to withhold the aid, and David Hale, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

View the complete November 12 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Hill/Vindman Depositions

Transcripts released earlier this week of testimonies from Fiona Hill and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman once again corroborated Trump’s gross abuse of power, and revealed that Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who defied a subpoena to testify today, was a central player in Trump’s extortion attempt.

MULVANEY COORDINATED TRUMP’S PRESSURE CAMPAIGN.

Continue reading “KEY TAKEAWAYS: Hill/Vindman Depositions”

Trump cites corruption in Kyiv and European stinginess to justify actions on Ukraine. Neither rationale withstands close scrutiny.

Washington Post logoIf President Trump’s goal in withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine was to end the corruption that had plagued successive governments there, last summer was a curious time to do it.

In late May, weeks before Trump ordered nearly $400 million in congressionally approved security assistance frozen, the Defense and State departments certified that the Ukrainian government had taken “substantial actions” toward “decreasing corruption and increasing accountability” and recommended the aid go forward.

New President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose landslide April victory was followed by the election of an absolute parliamentary majority for his Servant of the People party, “had appointed reformist ministers and supported long-stalled anti-corruption legislation,” William B. Taylor Jr., the Trump-appointed senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified before the House impeachment inquiry late last month.

View the complete November 11 article by Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.

Why the first 3 impeachment witnesses to publicly testify are too credible for Trump supporters to attack: GOP strategist

AlterNet logoHouse Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump is entering a new phase this week, with three witnesses set to publicly testify (all of the previous testimony took place in closed-door hearings). Inevitably, Trump supporters will do everything they can to try to discredit their testimony, but according to GOP activist and Never Trump conservative Susan Del Percio, the witnesses are too credible for Trump allies to successfully discredit.

The three witnesses are diplomat William Taylor, who handled Ukraine-related matters for the Trump Administration; George Kent, an official for the U.S. State Department; and Marie Yovanovitch, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Taylor and Kent are both scheduled to testify on Wednesday, while Yovanovitch’s testimony is set for this Friday, November 15.

Appearing on MSNBC, Del Percio told host Ayman Mohyeldin, “We’ve seen some of what the Republicans have up their sleeves. They are going to try and discredit the witnesses. But as (journalist) Sam Stein said, they are unimpeachable witnesses. These are all government servants, people who have dedicated their lives not just to their post, but in Taylor’s case, he served in Vietnam. These are very accomplished people.”

View the complete November 11 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to be rotated off National Security Council

AlterNet logoEditor’s note: The headline of this article has been updated to more accurately reflect Vidman’s pending departure from the NSC:

2/ agencies and they eventually go back. That’s true as far as it goes. But he was asked a pretty specific question about whether Vindman was losing his job over the testimony. If he is not it’s pretty easy to say, no he’s not. No NSC appointments from any of these agencies …

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 11, 2019

Original article below:

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified on October 29 concerning his reaction to Donald Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky, was removed from the National Security Council on Sunday. In an interview on CBS “Face the Nation,”  National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, who replaced John Bolton in that position in September, said that Vindman would be leaving his position along with several others as part of a “streamlining” of the National Security Council. Continue reading “Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to be rotated off National Security Council”

What Joe Biden Actually Did in Ukraine

New York Times logoWhen Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2014, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pressed President Barack Obama to take decisive action, and fast, to make Moscow “pay in blood and money” for its aggression. The president, a Biden aide recalled, was having none of it.

Mr. Biden worked Mr. Obama during their weekly private lunches, imploring him to increase lethal aid, backing a push to ship FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev. The president flatly rejected the idea and dispatched him to the region as an emissary, cautioning him “about not overpromising to the Ukrainian government,” Mr. Biden would later write in a memoir.

So, Mr. Biden threw himself into what seemed like standard-issue vice-presidential stuff: prodding Ukraine’s leaders to tackle the rampant corruption that made their country a risky bet for international lenders — and pushing reform of Ukraine’s cronyism-ridden energy industry.

View the complete November 10 article by Glenn Thrush and Kennth P. Vogel on The New York Times website here.

He’s back! Trump’s former campaign manager resurfaces — at the heart of Ukraine

AlterNet logoHas anyone else noticed that we already had a presidential election during which all you heard was “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and now here we are three years later in the middle of another one, and all you hear is “Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!”? It’s easy to forget the good old days when you would read long take-outs by political whizzes like Jack Germond about the genius of some Republican state committeeman in deep Indiana who was going to turn out the south 32 counties for Nixon in a tightly contested primary. Who even knows what a Republican committeeman is these days, when you’re more likely to read that some hack Ukrainian prosecutor holds the keys to Trump’s re-election.

It’s 2016 all over again, folks. The only thing that’s changed is the name of the corrupt foreign country that Trump is tapping to influence his re-election to the presidency. Even some of the players are the same. Remember Paul Manafort, the late, lamented former Trump campaign chairman who fancied ostrich skin jackets and $12,000 suits? Well, old Paul is currently sporting prison polyester, waist chains and handcuffs, and he’s ba-a-a-a-a-a-ack!

Manafort’s name surfaced last month in reports that Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has been talking to the jailed former Trump campaign manager through his attorneys, seeking confirmation of a free-floating right-wing conspiracy theory that it wasn’t the Russians who meddled on behalf of Trump in the 2016 election, but the Ukrainians who butted in on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Yep, you read that right. From his cell in prison, no less, Manafort has been pushing a narrative about the 2016 election that discredits the rationale behind the entire investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian election meddling.

View the complete November 9 article by Lucian K. Truscott IV from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Impeachment strains longstanding bipartisan support for Ukraine

Consensus built on keeping Ukraine inside the Western European camp

The bipartisan backing for Ukraine in its long face-off with Russia has been a hallmark of Congress’ role in foreign policymaking for decades. Congress — both parties — has generally been willing to confront Moscow more forcefully over its treatment of Ukraine than the Trump, Obama or George W. Bush White Houses.

But with U.S. policy toward Ukraine the centerpiece of the impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump’s antipathy toward Kyiv out in the open, and Republicans not wanting to break with their GOP president publicly over Ukraine policy, concern is rising that this longstanding bipartisan consensus to keep Ukraine inside the Western European camp could erode.

Indeed, the career diplomats and military officers who have given depositions to the House Intelligence Committee in the past several weeks said — separate from any presidential misconduct — that they feared if Ukraine’s new president did Trump’s bidding and announced an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, that it would do precisely that — kill the bipartisan support for Ukraine in Congress.

View the complete November 8 article by Rachel Oswald on The Roll Call website here.