Continuing mess:
The New York Times
Impeachment War Room? Trump Does It All Himself, and That Worries Republicans
President Trump has long believed that he is the best communicator in the White House.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
By Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni
Oct. 2, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump was watching television in the White House on Wednesday morning when cable news channels started airing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warning at a news conference that any attempts by the president to stonewall their impeachment investigation would be viewed as obstruction.
Mr. Trump did not wait for Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schiff to finish before responding. First he attacked Ms. Pelosi on Twitter, saying she was neglecting the work of Congress “and trying to win an election through impeachment.” Then he tweeted again, sharing a campaign video that accused Democrats of trying to undo the results of the 2016 election.
He continued those attacks later in the afternoon, both before and after a meeting with Sauli Niinisto, the president of Finland, and became increasingly angry as he went on.
Mr. Trump has long believed that he is the best communicator in the White House, but as the presidential campaign picks up its pace and the prospect of his impeachment becomes more real, he seems to be its only empowered communicator, a one-man war room responding to developments almost hour by hour. And that is making many Republicans anxious.
For now, the White House has no organized response to impeachment, little guidance for surrogates to spread a consistent message even if it had developed one, and minimal coordination between the president’s legal advisers and his political ones. And West Wing aides are divided on everything from who is in charge to whether, after two years of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, impeachment even poses a serious political threat to the president.
“This is a very different animal than the Mueller investigation,” said Josh Holmes, a former top aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. “It’s a political question, not a legal one. They need to persuade Republicans in the House and the Senate of a bunch of really good arguments to have the partywide insulation the president is going to prefer going into this fight.”
And the White House has a narrow runway to adjust and tighten its response, with just over a week until the congressional recess ends. At that point, Republicans will return from their home districts and face questions about Mr. Trump’s tweets and condemnation of the whistle-blower — questions they might have difficulty answering.
“At this point, the president can hold his own,” Mr. Holmes added. “But I think they should be concerned with how Republicans handle it when they get back and for that, it probably does take a little bit of structure.”
For weeks, the most visible defender of the president has been Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, who is himself a central figure in the allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to find dirt on Democrats, leading several of the president’s advisers to warn that Mr. Giuliani’s freelance television appearances do him more harm than good.
But Mr. Trump has told them that he is pleased with the performances, and spent part of Saturday giving Mr. Giuliani talking points for the Sunday show circuit.
Others have urged the president to tone down his language, including his repeated use of the word “treason.” But Mr. Trump, who has frequently abandoned norms and paid little in terms of personal political consequences for doing so, has not changed his behavior. That has led some advisers, like Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, to settle into a hands-off approach. Mr. Mulvaney told associates he spent part of Sunday on a golf course outside Washington.
What’s left is Mr. Trump acting alone, and poised to live-tweet his own impeachment, complete with all-caps obscenities, alarming accusations of treason and warnings that impeachment is really a “coup.”
During his public appearances with Mr. Niinisto on Wednesday, Mr. Trump seemed as riled up as he has at any point in his presidency, railing against his opponents, mangling the facts to fit his preferred narrative and making allegations without evidence. Flush with anger and gesturing sharply, he spent most of his time on offense attacking his critics using words like “lowlife,” “dishonest,” “corrupt,” “shifty” and “fraud.”
Behind the scenes, Mr. Trump has seesawed from projecting confidence that there is a political benefit from the impeachment fight to lashing out at aides, blaming them for the fact that he is entangled by it in the first place.
Some Trump aides would like to see the return of Emmet T. Flood, the White House lawyer who oversaw the administration’s response to the special counsel’s investigation.CreditMark Wilson/Getty Images
In an email, the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, rejected questions about the West Wing’s approach to the impeachment inquiry.
“We have stated this several times,” she said. “There has not been any effort to put together a war room. The president did nothing wrong and we are still working over here.”
The confusion in the White House is leaving conservatives who want to help support Mr. Trump without a clear road map for how to do so. At a meeting on Wednesday morning with conservatives and Capitol Hill aides, White House officials were still taking the temperature on the potential political fallout of impeachment, rather than offering any instructions about their path going forward.
Paul Teller, an aide in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, quizzed the group about whether it thought a long or short impeachment process would play better with the president’s base. Mr. Teller also told the group that he believed Mr. Trump would want to see Mr. McConnell bring impeachment to a vote on the Senate floor, where Mr. Trump would be acquitted, rather than move to simply dismiss the charges.
Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s main domestic policy adviser, also briefly attended the meeting, but observed more than he spoke, according to a person familiar with what took place.
In the West Wing, aides who have seen Mr. Trump survive potentially debilitating scandals like the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape a month before the 2016 election, and the appointment of a special counsel with wide-ranging powers to investigate him, are shrugging off impeachment as just another bump in the road.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, is not pushing for the creation of any sort of official “war room,” and has told colleagues he is comfortable with the current structure supporting the president — one that also gives him freewheeling power.
Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor and one of Mr. Trump’s longest-serving aides, has told reporters that Trump supporters will not leave him because of impeachment. She joins a group that includes Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s personal lawyers, and other aides and allies, who believe that anything resembling a White House “war room” is needless and would make them look as if they were under siege.
“We won the Mueller probe,” Mr. Sekulow said on his afternoon radio show on Monday. “I tell you what. If Mueller was a war, this is a skirmish.”
But on Wednesday night, one White House official was anticipating changes with some staff members focused on the inquiry.
Other aides privately conceded that they did not know how the politics of the impeachment process would play out, and would like to see the White House Counsel’s Office bring back someone like Emmet T. Flood, the White House lawyer who oversaw the administration’s response to the special counsel’s investigation and worked on President Bill Clinton’s legal team during his impeachment.
Mr. Flood left the administration in June.
Some are also starting to notice small public cracks in Republican support.
“Starting to encounter Republicans who wonder if maybe the President should step aside for Pence,” Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger and radio host, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “They’re absolutely in the minority on the GOP side, but there does seem to be a fatigue setting in — tired of always fighting and always having to defend.”
While Mr. Trump has been focused in recent days on defending himself, his advisers have continued the assault on Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the former vice president and current presidential candidate, hoping it will cut through the impeachment noise. Mr. Kushner, who has been overseeing campaign messaging on impeachment, also personally signed off on a new round of campaign ads attacking Mr. Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Mr. Trump insisted on Wednesday that he was not trying to damage Mr. Biden in order to knock him out of the race — even while he attacked him.
“I’d rather run against Biden than almost any of those candidates,” he told reporters. “And I think they’re all weak, but I think Biden has never been a smart guy and he’s less smart now than he ever was.”
‘We’re Not Fooling Around’: House Democrats Vow to Subpoena White HouseOCT. 2, 2019False ‘Coup’ Claims by Trump Echo as Unifying Theme Against ImpeachmentOCT. 2, 2019As Impeachment Moves Forward, Trump’s Language Turns Darker
Trump Envoys Pushed Ukraine to Commit to Investigations
Oct. 3, 2019
Trump Publicly Urges China to Investigate the Bidens
© 2019 The New York Times Company
A scarring synopsis:
MSNBC
Quid pro quo: Newly released texts take Trump scandal to a new level
There’s a striking simplicity to the scandal that will almost certainly lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment: he used his office to try to coerce a foreign government into helping his re-election campaign. The evidence is unambiguous. More information continues to come to light, but few fair-minded observers believe the president’s guilt is in doubt.
There’s been no explicit need for Trump’s detractors to prove that his scheme included a quid pro quo – the United States would trade something of value to a foreign country in exchange for its participation in the Republican’s gambit – since Trump’s effort was itself scandalous.
But as of this morning, the quid pro quo has nevertheless been established, thanks to a series of text messages that were released overnight. NBC News reported this morning:
Text messages given to Congress show U.S. ambassadors working to persuade Ukraine to publicly commit to investigating President Donald Trump’s political opponents and explicitly linking the inquiry to whether Ukraine’s president would be granted an official White House visit.
The two ambassadors, both Trump picks, went so far as to draft language for what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should say, the texts indicate. The messages, released Thursday by House Democrats conducting an impeachment inquiry, show the ambassadors coordinating with both Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a top Zelenskiy aide.
One text shows Bill Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, asking, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Apparently reluctant to acknowledge criminal wrongdoing in print, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland replied, “Call me.”
In a subsequent message, Taylor added, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
Just as astonishing was a message Kurt Volker, the former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, sent to a Zelenskiy adviser shortly before the now-infamous Trump/Zelenskiy phone call. The message was clear about the White House’s political expectations, and how a presidential meeting was contingent on the Ukrainian president’s cooperation with the larger scheme.
“Heard from White House,” Volker wrote, “assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee published the texts online here (pdf).
A Washington Post analysis added that the newly released messages not only document the quid-pro-quo element of the scandal, they also offer “a strong suggestion that military aid was used as leverage – and hints at an attempt to hide that.”
For two weeks, Trump’s Republican allies have argued that in order for this to be a real scandal, it would have to include a quid pro quo. That posture has long been wrong: the effort to coerce Ukraine was itself indefensible.
But what will these same GOP voices say now that the evidence has taken the scandal to the next level, meeting the one standard Republicans said had to be met.
©2019 NBC UNIVERSAL
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The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry
By Meg Wagner and Mike Hayes, CNN
Updated 12:31 PM ET, Fri October 4, 2019
The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry What we’re covering here
The latest: Text messages released yesterday between US diplomats and a senior Ukrainian aide show how a potential Ukrainian investigation into the 2016 election was linked to a desired meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump.
How Trump is reacting: The President tweeted last night that he has the “absolute right” as president to ask other countries to investigate “corruption.”
2:12 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Kurt Volker is expected to resign from McCain Institute
From CNN’s Kylie Atwood
Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy to Ukraine, is expected to resign today as the executive director of the McCain Institute, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The source said it is an effort to make sure that the institute is not effected by all to the Ukraine controversy. Volker initially did not want to resign but has concluded it was the best thing for the institute.
About Volker: He was the first witness to appear before three congressional committees and to be deposed on the whistleblower complaint, which alleges that President Trump tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
2:09 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
What Republican House members are saying about the intelligence inspector general’s briefing
From CNN’s Jason Hoffman and Kristen Holmes
Reps. John Ratcliffe and Chris Stewart, both Republicans, just came out of the closed-door House Intelligence Committee briefing with Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
Sticking to the Republican talking points, both members attacked House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and his handling of the whistleblower process.
Ratcliff said Schiff, “should be disqualified from running an investigation where his committee, members or staff, are fact witnesses about contact with the whistleblower, and the whistleblower process”.
Stewart added that everything being discussed today comes down to “one sentence, in one phone call.”
1:59 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
How the impeachment investigation will likely play out
From CNN’s Marshall Cohen
Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill are barreling toward historic impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
The first step in the lengthly process is the investigation. Here’s what you need to know:
It has already started: House Democrats have been conducting multiple investigations through six separate committees, but the impeachment inquiry will now focus on the Ukraine affair. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is leading that probe, told CNN last week that there will be a “busy couple weeks” coming up despite a scheduled congressional recess, and that he expects subpoenas and witness interviews to take place “as expeditiously as possible.”
The key interviews: Critical to the investigation will be an interview with the whistleblower who filed the complaint, as well as other potential witnesses from the White House and possibly from Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who spearheaded the Ukrainian efforts. The whistleblower has requested anonymity, so security measures will also have to be worked out.
The articles of impeachment: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially indicated that she wants the Democratic-run committees to wrap up their probes and submit their most compelling evidence of wrongdoing to the House Judiciary Committee. That panel is traditionally tasked with writing formal articles of impeachment.
Once the articles of impeachment are drawn up, it’ll be time for some key votes in the House. You can read more about next phases here.
12:56 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Here’s how the House could enforce subpoenas against key Ukraine witnesses
From CNN legal analyst Elie Honig
Earlier this week, Democrats told the White House to expect subpoenas related to the Ukraine matter. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani have already received subpoenas as part of the ongoing impeachment investigation.
What can the House do to enforce its subpoenas if and when witnesses like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo refuse to comply?
The House has three traditional legal avenues, all of them problematic.
First, the House theoretically has its own inherent enforcement power, but that has essentially gone dormant after nearly a century of non-use. The House does not have a police force capable of making arrests — the sergeant-at-arms is primarily a security force — or a functioning jail facility.
Second, the House can refer a contempt case for criminal prosecution. But that referral would go to Barr’s Justice Department, and it is very unlikely he would bring criminal charges given his established pattern of protecting Trump and those around him.
Third, the House can file a civil lawsuit in court. But this will take months to resolve, and the House simply does not have the luxury of time to litigate.
But the House is getting creative — and tough. Schiff has notified subpoena recipients that he will draw an “adverse inference” if they do not comply.
In other words, he will assume their non-response means the testimony would have been damaging to those accused.
Second, the House has the ability to bring an article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress; indeed, one of the draft articles of impeachment against Nixon was for obstruction of Congress.
Read more impeachment questions and ask your own here.
12:41 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Sen. Lindsey Graham wants Pelosi to call a vote on impeachment
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, put out a statement today calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call a vote on impeachment.
“We need a ‘John Hancock Moment’ from House Democrats before moving forward on impeachment," Graham said.
He added that he’d like to see Democratic House members put their votes on the record so “history can evaluate their actions.”
More on this: Earlier today, CNN reported that President Trump will send a letter to Pelosi demanding a full house vote on impeachment before the White House turns over documents.
12:40 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Volker: Trump said Ukraine “tried to take me down”
From CNN’s Jeremy Herb
Former US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker’s explained in his opening statement to Congress that he connected President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Ukraine’s leadership in an effort to convince Giuliani — and through him the President — there was new leadership in Ukraine that could be trusted.
In Volker’s statement, which was delivered during his closed-door testimony Thursday and obtained by CNN, the US diplomat portrays himself as someone who was seeking to divert Giuliani’s influence on the President and help Trump see that the new government was serious about reform.
Volker said Trump was “skeptical” of Ukraine’s leadership, which he said was understandable given the country’s history of corruption, but he also added that the President suggested that Ukraine “tried to take me down,” a reference to the unproven allegations that Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election meddling.
“He said that 'Ukraine was a corrupt country, full of ‘terrible people,’” Volker said of Trump. “He said they ‘tried to take me down.’" In the course of that conversation, he referenced conversations with Mayor Giuliani. It was clear to me that despite the positive news and recommendations being conveyed by this official delegation about the new President, President Trump had a deeply rooted negative view on Ukraine rooted in the past. He was clearly receiving other information from other sources, including Mayor Giuliani, that was more negative, causing him to retain this negative view.”
Volker also said that he was not aware of any effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden — and he made a point to distinguish investigations into Biden with investigations into Burisma, the energy company where Hunter Biden was hired as a board member. But he added he was not aware that Biden was mentioned on the July 25 call until the transcript was released.
Volker testified that he became aware that the foreign aid to Ukraine was being held up but at the same time that he was connecting Ukrainian leadership aides with Giuliani, but he said he “did not perceive these issues to be linked in any way.”
Volker also warned Ukraine to tread carefully so as not to influence US election.
“Moreover, as I was aware of public accusations about the Vice President, several times I cautioned the Ukrainians to distinguish between highlighting their own efforts to fight corruption domestically, including investigating Ukrainian individuals (something we support as a matter of US policy), and doing anything that could be seen as impacting US elections (which is in neither the United States’ nor Ukraine’s own interests),” he said in his statement.
12:33 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Mitt Romney: Trump’s appeals to Ukraine and China are “wrong and appalling”
From CNN’s Kevin Liptak
Sen. Mitt Romney tweeted today that President Trump’s appeals to Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden are “wrong and appalling.”
“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” wrote Romney.
“By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling,” Romney continued.
Romney is one of few Congressional Republicans who have criticized the President’s actions.
12:22 p.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Trump claims Hunter Biden is getting “a billion and a half dollars out of China.” That’s a misrepresentation of his role.
From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam
Evan Vucci/AP
Speaking to reporters at the White House, President Trump said that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, took out “a billion and a half dollars out of China.”
“Biden is corrupt, his son is corrupt,” Trump said. “His son takes out billions of dollars, billions, and he has no experience.”
Trump has repeatedly accused both Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, of corruption involving China and Ukraine. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son Hunter.
Here’s what we know about Hunter Biden and China: According to the New York Times, Biden’s son Hunter has a 10% interest in BHR Partners, a private-equity fund that the Chinese government-owned Bank of China has invested in.
As of May 2019, both The New York Times and the Washington Post reported that Hunter had not received any money from the fund or in connection with his role as an unpaid advisory board member.
You can read more from the fact check here.
11:51 a.m. ET, October 4, 2019
Trump says he’s not sure if White House will comply with subpoenas
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
President Trump was asked if the White House will comply with the House’s impeachment inquiry. He said he wasn’t sure.
“That’s up to the lawyers,” Trump told reporters.
Some background on this: House Democrats have said they plan to subpoena the White House today for a host of documents as part of the impeachment inquiry. They have warned the White House and Trump’s administration against interfering with the probe.
So what can the House do if officials refuse to comply with the subpoenas? CNN legal analyst Elie Honig says there are three traditional legal avenues — and all of them problematic.
The House theoretically has its own inherent enforcement power, but that has essentially gone dormant after nearly a century of non-use. The House does not have a police force capable of making arrests — the sergeant-at-arms is primarily a security force — or a functioning jail facility.
The House can refer a contempt case for criminal prosecution. But that referral would go to Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department, and it is very unlikely he would bring criminal charges given his established pattern of protecting Trump and those around him.
The House can file a civil lawsuit in court. But this will take months to resolve, and the House simply does not have the luxury of time to litigate.
© 2019 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The New York Times
2nd Official Is Weighing Whether to Blow the Whistle on Trump’s Ukraine Dealings
The official, a member of the intelligence community, was interviewed by the inspector general to corroborate the original whistle-blower’
President Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during a phone call.CreditAnna Moneymaker/The New York Times
By Michael S. Schmidt and Adam Goldman
Oct. 4, 2019
WASHINGTON — A second intelligence official who was alarmed by President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is weighing whether to file his own formal whistle-blower complaint and testify to Congress, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The official has more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower, whose complaint that Mr. Trump was using his power to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals touched off an impeachment inquiry. The second official is among those interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the allegations of the original whistle-blower, one of the people said.
The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, briefed lawmakersprivately on Friday about how he substantiated the whistle-blower’s account. It was not clear whether he told lawmakers that the second official was considering filing a complaint.
A new complaint, particularly from someone closer to the events, would potentially add further credibility to the account of the first whistle-blower, a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to the National Security Council at one point. He said that he relied on information from more than a half-dozen American officials to compile his allegations about Mr. Trump’s campaign to solicit foreign election interference that could benefit him politically.
Oct. 4, 2019
Other evidence has emerged to back the whistle-blower’s claim. A reconstructed transcript of a July callbetween Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky released by the White House also showed Mr. Trump pressuring Ukraine. Mr. Trump appeared to believe that its release would quell the push for impeachment, but it only emboldened House Democrats.
Because the second official has met with Mr. Atkinson’s office, it was unclear whether he needs to file a complaint to gain the legal protections offered to intelligence community whistle-blowers. Witnesses who speak with inspectors general are protected by federal law that outlaws reprisals against officials who cooperate with an inspector general.
Whistle-blowers have created a new threat for Mr. Trump. Though the White House has stonewalled Democrats in Congress investigating allegations from the special counsel’s report, the president has little similar ability to stymie whistle-blowers from speaking to Congress.
The Trump administration had blocked Mr. Atkinson from sharing the whistle-blower complaint with lawmakers but later relented.
The Evidence Collected So Far in the Trump Impeachment Inquiry
Oct. 4, 2019
Mr. Trump and his allies have taken aim at the credibility of the original whistle-blower by noting that he had secondhand knowledge. The president has also singled out his sources, saying that they were “close to a spy.”
“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Mr. Trump told staff members at the United States Mission to the United Nations. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
Mr. Atkinson has identified some indications of “arguable political bias” that the whistle-blower had in favor of a rival candidate. But the inspector general said that the existence of that bias did not alter his conclusion that the complaint was credible.
Still, testimony from someone with more direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s efforts to use American foreign policy for potential political gain would most likely undermine conservatives’ attacks on the C.I.A. officer’s credibility.
President Trump’s personal lawyer. The prosecutor general of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s son. These are just some of the names mentioned in the whistle-blower’s complaint. What were their roles? We break it down.
The House Intelligence Committee has taken the lead on the investigation into the whistle-blower’s claims as part of the impeachment inquiry into whether Mr. Trump abused his powers by using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal interests. Committee aides had sought to interview the whistle-blower last week but have yet to sit down with him, and it was unclear how soon they could.
Democrats looking to keep up the momentum of their impeachment inquiry are seeing more results than they have in their examination of the findings of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russia’s election interference and Mr. Trump’s efforts to impede investigators. Though Mr. Mueller laid out stark examples of Mr. Trump trying to interfere with the inquiry, the White House has fought Democrats’ pursuit of eyewitness testimony.
House Democrats have moved more quickly in scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s use of power to solicit potential foreign help in his 2020 re-election campaign.
Late Thursday, they released explosive texts exchanged by State Department officials and Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani about pressuring the Ukrainians to commit to conducting the investigations that could help Mr. Trump politically.
In one exchange, the Americans sought to have Mr. Zelensky issue a statement promising to investigate a Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., sat on the board.
But the top American diplomat in Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., raised concerns about the White House’s decision to freeze $391 million in military assistance to Ukraine, tying it directly to the campaign to pressure the Ukrainians to develop dirt on the president’s political opponents.
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Mr. Taylor wrote on Sept. 9 to Kurt D. Volker, the State Department’s former special envoy for Ukraine, and Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union.
The texts show a dispute among the men about whether the president was trying to use the security aid or a White House meeting with Mr. Zelensky as leverage — a charge at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
Mr. Trump has denied that he held up the aid as a quid pro quo. “Listen to this: There is no pro quo,” he told reporters on Friday on the South Lawn of the White House in response to questions about the texts.
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
Trump Denies Quid Pro Quo for Ukraine, but Envoys Had Their Doubts
Oct. 4, 2019
Impeachment Investigators Subpoena White House and Ask Pence for Documents on Ukraine
Oct. 4, 2019
White House Knew of Whistle-Blower’s Allegations Soon After Trump’s Call With Ukraine Leader
Sept. 26, 2019
Sept. 24, 2019
Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
CreditT.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
Impeachment Investigators Subpoena White House and Ask Pence for Documents on Ukraine
Oct. 4, 2019
Trump Denies Quid Pro Quo for Ukraine, but Envoys Had Their Doubts
© 2019 The New York Times Company
Fox News. descriptive reaction to impeachment :
TRUMP IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY
Published October 05, 2019
Matt Gaetz: Democrats’ impeachment inquiry ‘politically illegitimate’ – and public will see that
By Charles Creitz | Fox News
The American people will recognize Democrats’ effort to impeach President Trump as a “politically illegitimate exercise,” according to Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
Democrats have decided to be less transparent in their latest endeavor against Trump because past congressional hearings didn’t pan out as planned, Gaetz claimed Friday on “Hannity.”
“The radical left and their allies in the fake news media have been uncontent to just disagree with him, and so they have been trying to delegitimize his election,” he said. “They’re going to rush to an impeachment and the American people will see it as the politically illegitimate exercise that it is.”
“They’re going to rush to an impeachment and the American people will see it as the politically illegitimate exercise that it is.”
— U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
WASHINGTON POST AWARDS ADAM SCHIFF ‘FOUR PINOCCHIOS’ FOR FALSE COMMENTS ABOUT WHISTLEBLOWER
Gaetz, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, also claimed that House hearings featuring former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and Corey Lewandowskibackfired for Democrats.
“They’re not interested in developing the evidence – they’re not actually interested in holding hearings and bringing people forward,” he said, calling the three hearings “disaster[s] for Democrats.”
Some inside government ‘hell-bent on destroying this president,’ Hogan Gidley says
Rudy Giuliani slams Barack Obama, saying ex-president could have stopped any potential Biden-Ukraine ‘conflict’
He called the Russia investigation a “hoax” and said Democrats pushing forward with the Trump impeachment inquiry are not getting routine participation from all members of Congress.
Gaetz questioned why Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., remains chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee despite a claim about the Ukraine whistleblower that earned him four “Pinocchio’s” from the Washington Post.
CLICK HERE FOR THE ALL-NEW FOXBUSINESS.COM
The Post he hadn’t told the truth about his knowledge of the Ukraine whistleblower. Schiff has played a leading role in investigating the Trump-Ukraine scandal but hasn’t been truthful in the process, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler.
“Schiff’s answers are especially interesting in the wake of reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post that the whistleblower approached a House Intelligence Committee staff member for guidance before filing a complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general,” Kessler wrote.
On “Hannity,” Gaetz claimed Schiff, “lied to the American people for two and a half years.”
“How is Adam Schiff even the chairman of a committee in the Congress right now?” he asked. “That guy should be gone.”
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