Tag: Ukraine

Trump judicial pick blows off Democrats’ questions on Ukraine

An appeals court nominee has ignored a request from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but still advances

An appeals court nominee has ignored a request from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to say whether he played a role in White House events now at the heart of the accelerating House impeachment probe — and Republicans haven’t let that halt his move through the confirmation process.

The committee voted 12-10 along party lines Thursday to advance the nomination of Steven Menashi, who works in the White House counsel’s office. President Donald Trump picked him for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit based in New York.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., filed cloture on the nomination Thursday afternoon. That move lines up a vote on Menashi early next week, just as the House holds its first public impeachment hearings focused on the events surrounding Trump’s controversial July 25 call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

View the complete November 7 article by Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.

Bolton willing to defy White House and testify if court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views

Washington Post logoFormer national security adviser John Bolton is willing to defy the White House and testify in the House impeachment inquiry about his alarm at the Ukraine pressure campaign if a federal court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views.

Bolton could be a powerful witness for Democrats: Top State Department and national security officials already have testified that he was deeply concerned about efforts by Trump and his allies to push Ukraine to open investigations into a political rival of the president’s while the Trump administration held up military aid to that country.

The former national security adviser, who abruptly left his post in September, is expected to confirm those witnesses’ statements and describe his conversations with Trump, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry.

View the complete November 7 article by Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

Facing Investigation, Giuliani Needed a Lawyer, but Firms Stayed Away

New York Times logoAfter weeks of looking, Mr. Giuliani said he assembled a legal team to represent him as he comes under scrutiny from federal prosecutors.

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Wednesday that he had assembled a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, an announcement that came after weeks of sputtered attempts to find a lawyer willing to take him on as a client.

Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter that he would be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. The hires show how seriously Mr. Giuliani is treating the inquiry by federal prosectors in Manhattan, who are investigating whether he violated lobbying laws in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Mr. Trump’s rivals.

“The evidence, when revealed fully, will show that this present farce is as much a frame-up and hoax as Russian collusion, maybe worse, and will prove the President is innocent,” Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter, just before naming his new lawyers.

View the complete November 6 article by Maggie Haberman, William K. Rashbaum and Michael Rothfeld on The New York Times website here.

Impeachment transcripts reveal a consistent, damaging narrative for Trump

The witness testimonies released so far are all aligned, offering Democrats a powerful political weapon in public hearings next week.

Rudy Giuliani was President Donald Trump’s enforcer, circumventing official channels and bewildering professional diplomats as he pressured Ukraine to target Trump’s political opponents.

Along the way, career foreign service officers became collateral damage — and questions of a Trump-authorized quid pro quo emerged, blowing up into a scandal that now imperils the Trump presidency.

Those are the unchallenged details revealed so far in five transcripts of depositions released this week as part of the House impeachment inquiry. And as Democrats prepare for public hearings next week, they are underscoring the common thread running through the witnesses’ accounts.

View the complete November 6 article by Andrew Desiderio on the Politico website here.

Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying the president broke no laws in call with Ukrainian leader

Washington Post logoPresident Trump wanted Attorney General William P. Barr to hold a news conference declaring that the commander in chief had broken no laws during a phone call in which he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a political rival, though Barr ultimately declined to do so, people familiar with the matter said.

The request from Trump traveled from the president to other White House officials and eventually to the Justice Department. The president has mentioned Barr’s demurral to associates in recent weeks, saying he wished Barr would have held the news conference, Trump advisers say.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has sought some distance from the White House, particularly on matters relating to the burgeoning controversy over Trump’s dealings on Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they sparked.

View the complete November 6 article by Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig on The Washington Post website here.

Acting ambassador says it was his ‘clear understanding’ U.S. military aid would not be sent until Ukraine pursued investigations that could help Trump

Washington Post logoHouse investigators released a transcript Wednesday of the closed-door testimony of William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, who told lawmakers that it was his “clear understanding” that U.S. military aid would not be sent until that country pursued investigations that could politically benefit President Trump.

The impeachment inquiry moved forward on other fronts, with House Democrats announcing that the first public hearings would be held next week and David Hale, the State Department’s third-ranking official, testifying privately at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Democrats hope Hale can shed more light on the removal of Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine after she became the target of false rumors questioning her loyalty to Trump.

View the complete November 6 article by John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez and Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s false claim about what the Ukrainian president said about the U.S. ambassador

Washington Post logo“I really don’t know her. But if you look at the transcripts, the president of Ukraine was not a fan of hers, either. I mean, he did not exactly say glowing things. I’m sure she’s a very fine woman. I just don’t know much about her.”

— President Trump, in remarks to reporters about former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Nov. 4, 2019

“Even if you listen to the very good conversation that I had — a very, very good, no-pressure, congenial conversation with the new president of Ukraine — he had some things that were not flattering to say about her. And that came out of the blue.”
— Trump, in a Fox News interview, Oct. 12, 2019

Trump keeps telling people to “read the transcript” of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, insisting that the July 25 conversation did not include any impeachable conduct.

Trump also keeps saying that Zelensky voiced dissatisfaction with Marie Yovanovitch, a career U.S. diplomat who until recently was the American ambassador in Kyiv, on that phone call.

We read the transcript. Trump criticized Yovanovitch first, and Zelensky, seemingly under pressure, said he agreed.

View the complete November 6 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

How Sean Hannity Stoked Trump’s Rage Towards Ukraine

President Donald Trump has a deep enmity for Ukraine that long predates the fateful July 2019 phone call which triggered an impeachment inquiry, The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe and Josh Dawsey reported Saturday. Their story depicts the president raging against Ukraine as early as a 2017 briefing to prepare him for an upcoming September meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. White House aides were reportedly baffled by Trump’s anti-Ukraine animus. “We could never quite understand it,” a former senior White House official told the Post. “There were accusations that they had somehow worked with the Clinton campaign. There were accusations they’d hurt him. He just hated Ukraine.”

There’s a simple answer to Trump aides’ confusion about the source of the president’s conspiracy theories — check what he’s been watching on his television. In the months leading up to that September 2017 meeting, sometime presidential adviser Sean Hannity was telling Trump and the rest of his Fox News audience that the “real collusion” during the 2016 election had been between Hillary Clinton and Ukraine.

In July 2017, The New York Times broke the news that Donald Trump Jr. had arranged a June 2016 meeting between the campaign’s top aides and “a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin” after being informed that the lawyer would provide damaging information on Clinton as part of the Russian “government’s support” for the Trump campaign. The story came weeks after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to look into Russian interference in the election and was exacerbated by a false statement Trump Jr. released about the meeting that the president had dictated.

View the complete November 4 article by Matt Gertz from Media Matters on the National Memo website here.

Lev Parnas, Giuliani Associate, Opens Talks With Impeachment Investigators

New York Times logoMr. Parnas could offer Congress a vein of information about a political pressure campaign in Ukraine.

An associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who was involved in a campaign to pressure Ukraine into aiding President Trump’s political prospects has broken ranks, opening a dialogue with congressional impeachment investigators and accusing the president of falsely denying their relationship.

The associate, Lev Parnas, had previously resisted speaking with investigators for the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings, which are examining the president’s pressure attempts in Ukraine. A former lawyer for Mr. Trump was then representing Mr. Parnas.

But since then, Mr. Parnas has hired new lawyers who contacted the congressional investigators last week to notify them to “direct any future correspondence or communication to us,” according to a copy of the letter.

View the complete November 4 article by Ben Protess, Michael Rothfeld and William K. Rashbaum on The New York Times website here.

Adam Schiff, a Trump Punching Bag, Takes His Case to a Bigger Ring

New York Times logoMr. Schiff leads the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Depending on one’s viewpoint, he will either save the republic — or destroy it.

LOS ANGELES — The crowd was buzzing with Hollywood types — the actress Patricia Arquette, the producer Norman Lear — at a private film screening on Sunset Boulevard one recent Sunday afternoon. But here in liberal America, the biggest celebrity in the room was not someone who makes a living in what people call “the industry.”

It was Representative Adam B. Schiff, the strait-laced former federal prosecutor who was on the brink of prosecuting his biggest defendant yet: President Trump.

These are heady but perilous days for Mr. Schiff, the inscrutable and slightly nerdy chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who is leading the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump. Adored by the left, reviled by the right, he has become a Rorschach test for American politics. Depending on one’s point of view, he is either going to save the republic, or destroy it.

View the complete November 3 article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.