同情特朗普
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A mob enforcer doesn’t have to say “pay up, or we will destroy your store” to be guilty of extortion. The message is conveyed clearly enough if he says “nice store, shame if anything happened to it” combined with the storekeeper’s knowledge of what the mafia has done to those who didn’t pay up.
Likewise, President Trump did not have to say to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Accuse Joe Biden of corruption, or you’ll never see any more aid from the United States.” It was sufficient that, according to the Wall Street Journal, in a July 25 call, Trump badgered Zelensky eight times to investigate Biden, before also withholding $250 million in military aid. The Ukrainians got the message whether the quid pro quo was explicitly laid out. As a Ukrainian official told the Daily Beast, “Clearly, Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”
We don’t yet know the full details because of White House stonewalling, but from what we already know, this may be the most shocking revelation of wrongdoing by Trump since he fired FBI Director James B. Comey on May 9, 2017, (by his own admission) to squelch the investigation of his Russia ties. In 2016, candidate Trump implored a foreign power to interfere in the U.S. election on his behalf (“Russia, if you’re listening…”). In 2019, Trump appeared to use the full power of his office to extort a foreign leader to intervene in the next U.S. election on his behalf. The latter is far more egregious than the former. It is hard to imagine a more glaring example of a “high crime and misdemeanor.”
If there were any justice in the world, this would mark a turning point where Democrats find the courage to impeach and Republicans find the decency to stop defending the indefensible. Instead, so far we are getting a rerun of previous scandals characterized by Trump’s brazenness, Republicans’ servility and Democrats’ pusillanimity.
Trump effectively admitted on Sunday that he told Zelensky to investigate the Democratic front-runner. But he argued, with typical illogic, that the scandal is an invention of the “LameStream Media.” He accused the whistleblower of spying on him and claims to be a victim of the “Demented Deep State” — even though the inspector general who found the allegations credible and urgent is himself a Trump appointee. Trump then doubled down on the spurious accusations of corruption against Biden, which have been reviewed and refuted by Ukrainian authorities and independent journalists, thereby using this as another opportunity to put the smears into public circulation.
Trump’s consigliere, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has the gall to compare Biden to Vice President Spiro Agnew, who resigned after being accused of bribery, extortion and tax evasion. Like Joseph McCarthy’s “secret list” of communists in the State Department, Giuliani insists he has documentation for his lies but will not release it. Both Trump and Giuliani know that the utter falsity of their slanders doesn’t matter: As long as they say it, some people will believe it, and others will shrug in frustration and say they don’t know what to believe.
Trump’s sleazy lies are faithfully amplified by his lickspittle surrogates in the Cabinet, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and in Congress, such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Then there is the right-wing media machine. As Media Matters for America summarized, Fox News has alternatively ignored Ukraine-gate, denounced it as “pure nonsense,” claimed it was an attempt to distract from Trump’s stellar record, attacked the whistleblower as a “deep state … punk” and even praised Trump’s phone call with Zelensky as an example of the president’s brilliant negotiating style.
Unsurprisingly, the dumbest spin of all came from Trump’s de facto minister of propaganda, Sean Hannity, who suggested that Trump’s actions paled in comparison to President Barack Obama, who was caught on an open mic in 2012 telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” to make deals after the election. Yes, this would be an exact analogue to what Trump did — if Obama had said, “I’ll show more flexibility if you give me some dirt on Mitt Romney.” But he didn’t.
To think that Republicans bitterly criticized Obama for having supposedly betrayed the American people. Now most of them (Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is an honorable exception) have fallen strategically silent when it’s imperative to stand up for the rule of law against the most corrupt president in our history — Richard M. Nixon and Warren Harding included.
As long as Democrats do not proceed with impeachment — and perhaps even if they do — Trump has made clear that he will continue his all-out assault on the Constitution. And Republicans — who congratulate themselves on their alleged devotion to the Constitution — will not do anything about it except to cheer him on.
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Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged that he discussed former Vice President Joe Biden in a July call with Ukraine's president, as Democrats strengthened calls for investigation into Trump's contact with the foreign leader and party leadership warned of a new lawless chapter in the United States.
Trump, while speaking with reporters before departing the White House for events in Texas and Ohio, continued to defend his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but said the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate was discussed in the exchange.
"We had a great conversation. The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption -- all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son (adding to the corruption)," Trump told reporters.
CNN previously reported Trump pressed Zelensky in the call to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, according to a person familiar with the situation. That call was also part of a whistleblower complaint submitted to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, another person familiar with the situation told CNN.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden.
Trump previously branded criticism of the call a "Ukranian Witch Hunt," while Biden accused the President of abusing his power to "smear" him. On Sunday, the President said he hopes officials release details of the call, but slammed the whistleblower responsible for filing a complaint.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a strong warning later Sunday to the Trump administration, which has refused to hand over the whistleblower complaint, saying it "will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness" if the resistance persists.
The warning, shared in a letter to all House members, comes following a refusal last week by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to turn over the complaint to Congress. In her letter, Pelosi, a California Democrat, said if the administration's refusals continue, it would constitute a "serious possible breach of constitutional duties by" Trump and would take Congress "into a whole new stage of investigation."
Pelosi set a deadline for Maguire to turn over the full whistleblower complaint to the House Intelligence Committee during his scheduled appearance Thursday.
The Democratic leader's letter threatens investigation at a time when the White House is already facing House inquiries on multiple fronts and a continuing impeachment investigation by the House Judiciary Committee. The Trump administration has so far split on how to handle the details of the call, but any House-led investigation into the President's Ukraine contact could meet significant resistance from the White House, as it has stonewalled many of the congressional probes already in motion.
Pressure to impeach
Weighing in on the controversy earlier Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that impeachment "may be the only remedy" to Trump's refusal to make public the complaint and phone call transcript.
"If the President is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit that is providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the evil that conduct represents," the California Democrat told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," stopping short of calling on Congress to immediately launch proceedings.
Schiff, who has so far resisted joining other Democrats in calling for impeachment, told Tapper he has been "very reluctant" to push for proceedings against the President because he sees it as a "remedy of last resort," but also said Sunday that the President doesn't have the authority "to engage in underhanded discussions." The chairman's apparent edging toward impeachment follows pressure from others in his party -- including from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- to start proceedings.
On Friday, Warren, who is vying for her party's presidential nomination, tweeted that "Congress is complicit" in failing to start impeachment proceedings against Trump after news broke that he had allegedly pressured Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden.
Echoing Warren's sentiments, Ocasio-Cortez suggested in a tweet on Saturday that her party's "refusal to impeach" Trump was an even bigger scandal than what she said was the President's "lawbreaking behavior."
Asked by Tapper Sunday about Trump keeping conversations with foreign leaders private, Schiff said: "Well not if those conversations involve potential corruption or criminality or leverage being used for political advantage against our nation's interest."
"This would be, I think, the most profound violation of the presidential oath of office, certainly during this presidency, which says a lot, but perhaps during just about any presidency. There is no privilege that covers corruption. There is no privilege to engage in underhanded discussions," he said, adding that he's not certain that the call is the subject of the complaint.
White House split on releasing calls
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told reporters on Saturday that he didn't think Trump had tried pressuring Zelensky during the July call, but stopped short of saying the subject of Biden's son wasn't raised.
The President on Sunday described his conversation with the Ukrainian president as "warm and friendly" and repeatedly urged reporters to look instead at Biden and Democrats, who he said -- without providing evidence -- have "done some very bad things."
But while the President suggested he was open to releasing the conversation, telling reporters: "I hope they can put it out," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there's no evidence such an action "would be appropriate" at this time.
"We don't release transcripts very often. It's the rare case," Pompeo said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "Those are private conversations between world leaders, and it wouldn't be appropriate to do so except in the most extreme circumstances. There's no, there's no evidence that would be appropriate here at this point."
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin also weighed in, telling Tapper Sunday that he thinks releasing the transcript "would be a terrible precedent," arguing that "conversations between world leaders are meant to be confidential."
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There's a new political controversy in the US - involving Donald Trump, foreign nationals, questions about legal and ethical behaviour, and allegations against a political rival.
This feels a bit like déjà vu from 2016, with Russia, then-candidate Trump and Hillary Clinton, but it's a new country (Ukraine) and a new cast of characters (Joe Biden and his son Hunter).
Mr Trump is still right smack in the middle, of course.
The story can be difficult to follow, so here are some answers to the most pressing questions.
Why is this important?
Mr Trump's most ardent critics accuse him of using the powers of the presidency to bully Ukraine into digging up damaging information on a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden.
Image caption Hunter Biden looks on at his father at a World Food Program event in 2016
Meanwhile, Mr Trump and his supporters allege the former vice-president abused his power to pressure Ukraine to back away from a criminal investigation that could implicate his son, Hunter.
Mr Biden is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to take on Mr Trump next year.
In other words, it is nothing less than the White House at stake.
Where does this row stem from?
According to multiple media reports, Mr Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenski had a phone conversation on 25 July this year.
The US president is alleged to have pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former Vice-President Biden.
Mr Trump may have also discussed the $250m (£201m) in military Congress approved for Ukraine - aid that the Trump administration had delayed releasing until mid-September.
Has Mr Trump confirmed any of this?
Sort of.
Mr Trump said that he spoke to Mr Zelensky about the problem of corruption and also about Mr Biden and son Hunter among other issues.
It was a "nice conversation" on the phone - a "perfect" call.
Ukraine received widespread western backing after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014
The US gives aid to Ukraine so "we want to make sure that country is honest," he added.
On Twitter, Mr Trump has been more blunt, saying the controversy was created by Democrats and the "Crooked Media".
What are other US politicians saying?
Congressional Democrats say the phone call - raised by a whistleblower in a formal complaint - is important because it helps to shed light on the president's dealings with the foreign leader.
Critics of the White House say that Mr Trump put pressure on Mr Zelensky, urging him to tell officials in his government to investigate business activities related to Hunter Biden, who was a board member for a company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.
Democrats said that the president wanted the Ukrainians to start the investigation into corruption because this could sully the reputation of Hunter and his father.
Republicans have said little about the controversy. This shows the partisan nature of the controversy, which has - like much else in Washington - been divided by party politics.
However, at least one Republican, Mitt Romney, a US senator from Utah, said he would like to know more.
What happened to the whistleblower's complaint?
After receiving the complaint, the inspector general informed Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, and said the matter was "urgent". The intelligence community whistleblower law says the director has seven days to pass the complaint along to congressional intelligence committees.
That didn't happen.
Instead, Mr Maguire spoke to a lawyer who told him the issue was not "urgent", at least according to legal standards, according to the New York Times.
As a result, Mr Maguire decided that the members of the congressional oversight committees did not need to see it.
On 9 September, the inspector general informed Congress about the complaint's existence, but not the details. Democrats in Congress have since clamoured for more information - including a transcript of Mr Trump's call - but the administration has refused to co-operate.
And that's where things currently stand.
Mr Maguire is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, and lawmakers are likely to say they want to see the complaint. If that does not work, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff might file a lawsuit, according to CNN, to try and get access to it.
So did the president do something illegal?
The most damning allegation is that the president pressured a foreign leader for damaging information about a political opponent while holding out the prospect of US military aid.
Is that illegal? We do have some very recent precedent.
It certainly recalls the recently concluded two-year Robert Mueller investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to Russian election-meddling in 2016.
The special counsel's report detailed multiple contacts between the campaign and Russian nationals, including the June 2016 meeting between top campaign officials such as Donald Trump Jr and several Russians with ties to the Kremlin.
There has been some debate over whether soliciting opposition research from a foreign government constitutes a campaign finance violation, but Mr Mueller declined to file charges.
Mr Trump's Ukrainian call could also potentially run afoul of federal bribery statutes. The special counsel concluded that Justice Department policy guidelines prohibit a sitting president from being indicted, however, so even if Mr Trump did commit some kind of crime with his actions, he's safe at the moment from criminal prosecution.
With this in mind, a more relevant question might be …
Did Mr Trump commit an impeachable offence?
The constitutional process for handling a president who committed illegal and-or unethical acts is impeachment by a majority of the House of Representatives and conviction and removal by a two-thirds majority of the US Senate.
The US constitution outlines the grounds for impeachment as "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". When it comes down to it, an "impeachable offense" is whatever a majority of the House says it is.
Ever since the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, the drumbeat for impeachment among Democrats - who hold a comfortable majority in the House - has been steadily increasing. Up to now, however, the House Democratic leadership has been loathe to push ahead with a formal investigation that could lead to an impeachment vote.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has suggested that such a move could damage the electoral prospects of Democrats in moderate congressional districts and would in the end be meaningless because the Republicans who hold the majority in the Senate would never vote to remove the president.
With the latest Ukraine allegations, however, some Democrats have started to speak in a more assertive manner about their desire to impeach the president. "The president is pushing us down this road," said Mr Schiff on CNN.
At some point the calculus in the House could change and Democrats who are saying there is a moral responsibility to impeach the president could gain the upper hand.
Is there anything to these allegations about Joe Biden and his son?
The allegations against the Bidens pushed by Mr Trump and his lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, centre on the then-vice-president's successful effort to force out top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in 2016.
Mr Shokin's office was responsible for investigations into a Ukrainian gas company, Burisima Holdings, which at the time was paying Hunter Biden, Mr Biden's son, as much as $50,000 a month to serve on its board of directors.
Mr Trump, Mr Guiliani and others allege that the vice-president's pressure, which included the threat to withhold $1bn in US loan guarantees to the country, was an effort to protect his son and his company from potentially criminal exposure.
Former President Barack Obama sits with former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter at a basketball game in 2010
At the very least, according to critics, the Biden family's ties to Ukraine raise the perception of a possible conflict of interest.
Cutting against these allegations is the fact that Mr Biden was not the only public official - in the US, among EU countries and in Ukraine - calling for Mr Shokin's removal.
And as the New York Times recently noted, the Ukrainian prosecutor was not "aggressively pursuing" investigations into Burisima at the time, but was accused of using the threat of prosecution to solicit bribes from company leaders.
In addition, Mr Shokin's replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, continued to investigate Burisima for 10 months before ending all legal proceedings.
So is this 2016 all over again?
As noted, the parallels between this Ukraine episode and events surrounding 2016 Russian election-meddling story are unmistakable. There are, however, key differences.
Back in 2016, Mr Trump was a private citizen aspiring to the White House. His campaign may have been approached by foreign nationals offering assistance, but according to the Mueller investigation, the overtures either led to nothing or were rebuffed outright.
Now Mr Trump - with all the powers of the presidency at his disposal - is alleged to have initiated the contact with a foreign leader. While he denies pressuring the Ukrainian president, his critics say blocking military aid while repeatedly asking for an investigation into the Bidens makes Mr Trump's objective crystal clear.
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Trump Ukraine row: Democrats launch formal Trump impeachment inquiry
BBC, 37 minutes ago
US Democrats have opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump over claims that he sought political help from Ukraine.
Announcing the move top Democrat Nancy Pelosi said the president "must be held accountable".
Mr Trump has denied impropriety and called the efforts "garbage".
While there is strong support from Democrats on impeachment, if the inquiry moves forward it is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.
What is this row about?
Last week reports said US intelligence officials had complained to a government watchdog about Mr Trump's interactions with a foreign leader, who was later revealed to be the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
That whistleblower's complaint, deemed "urgent" and credible by the intelligence inspector general, has been demanded by Democrats but the White House and Department of Justice have refused to provide it.
What exactly was said remains unclear but Democrats accuse Mr Trump of threatening to withhold military aid to force Ukraine to investigate corruption allegations against Mr Biden and his son Hunter.
Mr Trump has acknowledged discussing Joe Biden with Mr Zelensky but said he was only trying to get Europe to step up assistance by threatening to withhold military aid.
What did Ms Pelosi say?
Ms Pelosi said Mr Trump had committed "a violation of the law", and called his actions "a breach of his constitutional responsibilities".
"This week the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take action that would benefit him politically," she said, adding: "The president must be held accountable."
She has so far resisted calls among her liberal rank-and-file to attempt to remove the Republican president from office as such an effort could bolster his support.
Mr Biden has also backed impeachment proceedings unless the US president complies with investigations.
Impeaching Mr Trump "would be a tragedy", Mr Biden said. "But a tragedy of his making." The former vice-president is the current frontrunner to take on Mr Trump in the 2020 election.
How has Mr Trump responded?
In a series of tweets Mr Trump said Democrats "purposely had to ruin and demean" his trip to the UN "with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage".
"They never even saw the transcript of the call. A total Witch Hunt!" he added.
He has promised to release a transcript of his conversation with Ukraine's president to show it was "totally appropriate".
In his response, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said: "Speaker Pelosi happens to be the Speaker of this House, but she does not speak for America when it comes to this issue."
"She cannot unilaterally decide we're in an impeachment inquiry," he added.
---------------------------------------
The dam has broken
For months now, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have been playing a semantics game. They wanted those who supported and those who opposed a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump to both think they were getting what they wanted.
This strategy suggested a fear by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others that heading down the path to impeachment would put moderate Democrats facing tough 2020 re-election fights at risk.
That calculation appears to have changed, after the rapid drumbeat of new revelations about Mr Trump's contacts with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Now even middle-of-the road politicians are coming out in favour of impeachment proceedings.
The dam has broken. The genie is out of the bottle. Pick your metaphor. The simple fact is that Ms Pelosi - a keen judge of the political mood within her caucus - has made the decision to shift from resisting impeachment to - at the very least - being open to it.
The path forward is uncertain. The president has announced that he will release the transcript of his 25 July phone conversation with Zelensky. While that won't be enough for Democrats, perhaps the White House will do more to accede to Congress's requests.
Opinion surveys could show the latest drama is taking a toll on one party or the other, causing political will to crumble. Or, both sides could dig in for a long, gruelling battle that could drag into the darkest days of winter.
Wait, what's this Trump-Ukraine story about?
Where next?
Ms Pelosi's announcement gives an official go-ahead for a committee to investigate the US president's phone call with the Ukrainian leader and determine whether he committed an impeachable offence.
In her announcement she said the six other congressional committees investigating Mr Trump on other matters would continue under the umbrella of a formal impeachment inquiry.
If it moves forward the House of Representatives will vote on any charges and with the Democrats in the majority there, it could comfortably pass.
But it would next move to the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required - and where the Republicans hold sway.
A YouGov poll said 55% of Americans would support impeachment if it was confirmed that President Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to push the country's officials to investigate Joe Biden.
BBC, 37 minutes ago
US Democrats have opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump over claims that he sought political help from Ukraine.
Announcing the move top Democrat Nancy Pelosi said the president "must be held accountable".
Mr Trump has denied impropriety and called the efforts "garbage".
While there is strong support from Democrats on impeachment, if the inquiry moves forward it is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.
What is this row about?
Last week reports said US intelligence officials had complained to a government watchdog about Mr Trump's interactions with a foreign leader, who was later revealed to be the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
That whistleblower's complaint, deemed "urgent" and credible by the intelligence inspector general, has been demanded by Democrats but the White House and Department of Justice have refused to provide it.
What exactly was said remains unclear but Democrats accuse Mr Trump of threatening to withhold military aid to force Ukraine to investigate corruption allegations against Mr Biden and his son Hunter.
Mr Trump has acknowledged discussing Joe Biden with Mr Zelensky but said he was only trying to get Europe to step up assistance by threatening to withhold military aid.
What did Ms Pelosi say?
Ms Pelosi said Mr Trump had committed "a violation of the law", and called his actions "a breach of his constitutional responsibilities".
"This week the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take action that would benefit him politically," she said, adding: "The president must be held accountable."
She has so far resisted calls among her liberal rank-and-file to attempt to remove the Republican president from office as such an effort could bolster his support.
Mr Biden has also backed impeachment proceedings unless the US president complies with investigations.
Impeaching Mr Trump "would be a tragedy", Mr Biden said. "But a tragedy of his making." The former vice-president is the current frontrunner to take on Mr Trump in the 2020 election.
How has Mr Trump responded?
In a series of tweets Mr Trump said Democrats "purposely had to ruin and demean" his trip to the UN "with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage".
"They never even saw the transcript of the call. A total Witch Hunt!" he added.
He has promised to release a transcript of his conversation with Ukraine's president to show it was "totally appropriate".
In his response, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said: "Speaker Pelosi happens to be the Speaker of this House, but she does not speak for America when it comes to this issue."
"She cannot unilaterally decide we're in an impeachment inquiry," he added.
---------------------------------------
The dam has broken
For months now, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have been playing a semantics game. They wanted those who supported and those who opposed a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump to both think they were getting what they wanted.
This strategy suggested a fear by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others that heading down the path to impeachment would put moderate Democrats facing tough 2020 re-election fights at risk.
That calculation appears to have changed, after the rapid drumbeat of new revelations about Mr Trump's contacts with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Now even middle-of-the road politicians are coming out in favour of impeachment proceedings.
The dam has broken. The genie is out of the bottle. Pick your metaphor. The simple fact is that Ms Pelosi - a keen judge of the political mood within her caucus - has made the decision to shift from resisting impeachment to - at the very least - being open to it.
The path forward is uncertain. The president has announced that he will release the transcript of his 25 July phone conversation with Zelensky. While that won't be enough for Democrats, perhaps the White House will do more to accede to Congress's requests.
Opinion surveys could show the latest drama is taking a toll on one party or the other, causing political will to crumble. Or, both sides could dig in for a long, gruelling battle that could drag into the darkest days of winter.
Wait, what's this Trump-Ukraine story about?
Where next?
Ms Pelosi's announcement gives an official go-ahead for a committee to investigate the US president's phone call with the Ukrainian leader and determine whether he committed an impeachable offence.
In her announcement she said the six other congressional committees investigating Mr Trump on other matters would continue under the umbrella of a formal impeachment inquiry.
If it moves forward the House of Representatives will vote on any charges and with the Democrats in the majority there, it could comfortably pass.
But it would next move to the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required - and where the Republicans hold sway.
A YouGov poll said 55% of Americans would support impeachment if it was confirmed that President Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to push the country's officials to investigate Joe Biden.
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Trump impeachment: Why Pelosi made her move - and what happens next?
BBC, 4 hours ago
[URL='https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49819351#'] [/URL]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49819351#
Nancy Pelosi has opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump - why now, and what could happen next?
For months, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have been playing a semantics game. They wanted those who supported and those who opposed a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump to both think they were getting what they wanted.
This strategy suggested a fear by Speaker Pelosi and others that heading down the path to impeachment would put moderate Democrats facing tough 2020 re-election fights at risk and jeopardise the party's House majority.
That calculus appears to have changed, after the rapid drumbeat of new revelations about Mr Trump's contacts with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Now even middle-of-the road politicians are coming out in favour of an impeachment proceeding.
Congressman Max Rose of Trump-friendly Staten Island, New York, had been a prominent holdout - but even he has softened his stance.
"This is a serious crisis, all options must be on the table, and it's time Republicans are as interested in the truth as the American people," he said in a statement.
The dam has broken. The genie is out of the bottle. Pick your metaphor. The simple fact is that Ms Pelosi - a keen judge of the political mood within her caucus - has made the decision to shift from resisting impeachment to advocating for it.
So what changed? The prospect of impeachment has been knocked around since the early days of the Trump presidency. Over the course of the Robert Mueller inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, each new revelation and indictment were met with calls for Congress to act.
Allegations about presidential obstruction of justice and Trump campaign collusion with Russia, as well as a grab bag of others - from unconstitutional profiteering from government largess to campaign finance violations - all prompted various level of howling for the president's removal.
It took the Ukraine story, however - the possibility that Mr Trump used presidential powers to pressure a foreign government to dig up (or manufacture) damaging information on a political rival - to forge the will among Democrats to contemplate a clear and unambiguous move toward impeachment.
There are a number of possible reasons why.
It could be that the latest controversy has hit like a clap of thunder over the course of just one week, rather than the drips and drabs from the Mueller investigation. The prospect of a quid-pro-quo involving the powers of the presidency and a political rival is also an easier story to explain than Emoluments Clause violations or byzantine campaign finance infractions.
Then there's the fact the Mueller inquiry was backward-looking - dealing with alleged misdeeds from the 2016 election. Many of the Democrats currently mulling impeachment weren't in Congress back then and campaigned on other issues in the 2018 mid-term elections.
The Ukraine story, on the other hand, is about allegations of an ongoing attempt to use the presidential powers for personal political benefit - events that have occurred on their watch, as it were. It's about requesting a foreign government to give information that could help the president win a future election - not about what a foreign government had done to influence a past one.
Accusations of sour grapes, or of relitigating past campaigns, don't apply here.
This controversy also once again highlights the blurred lines between the personal and the official that has frequently typified the Trump White House.
Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump's personal lawyer, was the president's point person in pressuring Ukraine to launch an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Although the former New York City mayor said he was in contact with the State Department prior to his August trip to Spain to meet with a Ukrainian official for this purpose, it wouldn't be surprising if the Ukrainians were confused about whether this was a formal request from the US government or a more unofficial effort.
The path forward is uncertain. The president has already announced that he will release the transcript of his 25 July phone conversation with Zelensky. While that won't be enough for Democrats, perhaps the White House will do more to accede to Congress's requests, thereby dousing the hottest of the impeachment fires.
Opinion surveys could show the latest drama is taking a toll on one party or the other, causing political will to crumble. A YouGov poll said 55% of Americans would support impeachment if it was confirmed that President Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to push the country's officials to investigate Mr Biden.
Or both sides could dig in for a long, gruelling battle that could drag into the darkest days of winter, as an embattled president gears up for a re-election fight that could be conducted in the shadow of a constitutional crisis.
BBC, 4 hours ago
[URL='https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49819351#'] [/URL]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49819351#
Nancy Pelosi has opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump - why now, and what could happen next?
For months, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have been playing a semantics game. They wanted those who supported and those who opposed a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump to both think they were getting what they wanted.
This strategy suggested a fear by Speaker Pelosi and others that heading down the path to impeachment would put moderate Democrats facing tough 2020 re-election fights at risk and jeopardise the party's House majority.
That calculus appears to have changed, after the rapid drumbeat of new revelations about Mr Trump's contacts with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Now even middle-of-the road politicians are coming out in favour of an impeachment proceeding.
Congressman Max Rose of Trump-friendly Staten Island, New York, had been a prominent holdout - but even he has softened his stance.
"This is a serious crisis, all options must be on the table, and it's time Republicans are as interested in the truth as the American people," he said in a statement.
The dam has broken. The genie is out of the bottle. Pick your metaphor. The simple fact is that Ms Pelosi - a keen judge of the political mood within her caucus - has made the decision to shift from resisting impeachment to advocating for it.
So what changed? The prospect of impeachment has been knocked around since the early days of the Trump presidency. Over the course of the Robert Mueller inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, each new revelation and indictment were met with calls for Congress to act.
Allegations about presidential obstruction of justice and Trump campaign collusion with Russia, as well as a grab bag of others - from unconstitutional profiteering from government largess to campaign finance violations - all prompted various level of howling for the president's removal.
It took the Ukraine story, however - the possibility that Mr Trump used presidential powers to pressure a foreign government to dig up (or manufacture) damaging information on a political rival - to forge the will among Democrats to contemplate a clear and unambiguous move toward impeachment.
There are a number of possible reasons why.
It could be that the latest controversy has hit like a clap of thunder over the course of just one week, rather than the drips and drabs from the Mueller investigation. The prospect of a quid-pro-quo involving the powers of the presidency and a political rival is also an easier story to explain than Emoluments Clause violations or byzantine campaign finance infractions.
Then there's the fact the Mueller inquiry was backward-looking - dealing with alleged misdeeds from the 2016 election. Many of the Democrats currently mulling impeachment weren't in Congress back then and campaigned on other issues in the 2018 mid-term elections.
The Ukraine story, on the other hand, is about allegations of an ongoing attempt to use the presidential powers for personal political benefit - events that have occurred on their watch, as it were. It's about requesting a foreign government to give information that could help the president win a future election - not about what a foreign government had done to influence a past one.
Accusations of sour grapes, or of relitigating past campaigns, don't apply here.
This controversy also once again highlights the blurred lines between the personal and the official that has frequently typified the Trump White House.
Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump's personal lawyer, was the president's point person in pressuring Ukraine to launch an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Although the former New York City mayor said he was in contact with the State Department prior to his August trip to Spain to meet with a Ukrainian official for this purpose, it wouldn't be surprising if the Ukrainians were confused about whether this was a formal request from the US government or a more unofficial effort.
The path forward is uncertain. The president has already announced that he will release the transcript of his 25 July phone conversation with Zelensky. While that won't be enough for Democrats, perhaps the White House will do more to accede to Congress's requests, thereby dousing the hottest of the impeachment fires.
Opinion surveys could show the latest drama is taking a toll on one party or the other, causing political will to crumble. A YouGov poll said 55% of Americans would support impeachment if it was confirmed that President Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to push the country's officials to investigate Mr Biden.
Or both sides could dig in for a long, gruelling battle that could drag into the darkest days of winter, as an embattled president gears up for a re-election fight that could be conducted in the shadow of a constitutional crisis.
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Cornered in a cold and lonely cave of his own construction, U.S. President Donald J. attempted to claw back from the brink of impeachment Tuesday by unsheathing a weapon he has been unwilling to deploy throughout his tumultuous term in office—the truth.
With the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives—led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the venerated Rep. John Lewis of Georgia—moving decisively and swiftly toward beginning an official impeachment process, Trump announced that he will release —within 24 hours—a full and declassified transcript of his now-infamous conversation with the fellow TV star who holds the presidency of Ukraine.
Wednesday’s document dump may be Trump’s last chance to staunch the “Mike Pence for President” wave that has swept the opposition benches. But, as Rep. Pramiya Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, told a Maclean’s reporter on Tuesday, “It was never about the transcript. We’ve got to get off the transcript. The issue is not the transcript. The President of the United States has admitted asking a foreign head of state to investigate a political rival. I think we have to stop looking for a secret smoking gun. Donald Trump is the smoking gun—he has committed the crime in front of all of us.”
If Trump is impeached by a simple majority in the House—an action that appears inevitable with most of the Democratic membership now supporting it—the president will face trial in the Senate with the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court acting as presiding judge and a two-thirds majority needed to force his removal from office. Two U.S. presidents—Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1998)—have been impeached by the House. Each was acquitted in the Senate. Facing certain conviction by his own party in 1974, Richard M. Nixon chose to resign.
“The Democrats have been talking about impeaching Donald Trump for a year and a half,” Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, puffed contrarily in conversation with a Maclean’s correspondent. “It’s time to go hard or go home. If you’re going to do it, do it. Do it.”
Months after their clean-up hitter, Robert Mueller, went down on strikes, and after years of prattling about emoluments and nepotism, that foulmouthed Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib from Michigan finally appears to be right—they are gonna impeach the brothertrucker.
It was late Tuesday afternoon when Speaker Pelosi ended a full year of hesitation and reticence when she announced that her party indeed will do it, and they will do it soon.
“This week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” the Speaker said. “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.
“Therefore today, I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”
Her statement came hours after Rep. Lewis, the 79-year-old civil rights paragon, said on the floor of the House of Representatives, “We cannot delay. We must not wait. Now is the time to act. I have been patient while we tried every other path and used every other tool. We will never find the truth unless we use the power given to the House of Representatives and the House alone to begin an official investigation as dictated by the Constitution. The future of our democracy is at stake”
Speaking to reporters in New York after delivering a lifeless and un-Trump-like address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, the president maintained that the transcript will prove that “There was no quid pro quo … no pressure applied, nothing” during his conversation with Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky on July 25.
Bivouacked in his own bed at Trump Tower for the week, far from the Washington maelstrom, the president asserted Tuesday that he had delayed a payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the Putin-pressured Ukrainians at midsummer “because I wanted other countries to pay.” On Monday, he had claimed that he didn’t want to wire funds to Kyiv only to have them pocketed by corrupt bureaucrats. (Ukraine is ranked number 120 on the global Corruption Perception Index, with the United States rated as the 23rd-most-honest nation, and Canada a sterling ninth.)
“It’s just a continuation of the witch hunt,” Trump told reporters in New York, according to pool reports. “Our country’s doing the best it’s ever done.”
“They’re going to lose the election,” Trump said, reducing his predicament to its existential core—not as a question of ethics, honesty, or criminality, but as yet another skirmish in America’s unending political civil war.
“They say it’s a positive for me,” Trump postured, echoing an argument that several Democrats had put forward before Speaker Pelosi’s capitulation: that Trump’s almost-certain acquittal in the Senate will hand him a powerful armament for the 2020 campaign.
“How can you do this and you haven’t even seen the phone call?”
The capital and Capitol were transfixed by the drama, while, in the words of Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, the rest of the country cared “Not at all. Not at all.”
Held hostage to the mud fight over the president’s alleged scheme to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the former Soviet republic investigated the business wheelings of Hunter Biden, son of the former vice-president who—what a coincidence—is a leading Democratic contender for the White House in 2020, were gun control, health insurance reform, prescription drug pricing and the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement that was initialed by the three countries’ leaders only 298 days ago.
Congressional leaders maintained that the body could pass important legislation on a bipartisan basis even as it tied itself in knots over impeachment. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, said that it is time for politicians to prove that “they can walk and chew bubblegum.”
Speaking in Delaware on Tuesday, former vice-president Biden said “I knew when I decided to run this president would attack me and my family. That’s what he does.
“And I know that even though every reputable publication that has looked at these charges has found them baseless, untrue, and without merit, it won’t stop him. I can take the political attacks. They’ll come and go and soon be forgotten. But if we allow a president to get away with shredding the United States Constitution—that will last forever.”
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House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday announced that the Democratic-led House was moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry and directed six committees to proceed with investigations of the president’s actions.
Democrats have accused Trump, who is seeking re-election next year, of soliciting Ukraine’s help to smear Biden, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, before the 2020 election.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump said in the call, according to the summary provided by the Justice Department.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said, according to the memo.
The call occurred after Trump had ordered the U.S. government to freeze nearly $400 million in American aid to Ukraine.
The House inquiry could lead to articles of impeachment in the House that could trigger a trial in the Senate on whether to remove Trump from office.
Trump told Zelenskiy that Attorney General William Barr, the top U.S. law enforcement official, would reach out to him about re-opening the investigation into the Ukrainian gas company.
But Trump did not ask Barr to contact Ukraine, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said, and Barr has not communicated with Ukraine about a possible investigation or any other subject. Barr, a Trump appointee, first found out about the conversation several weeks after it took place, Kupec said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a luncheon for world leaders at the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at UN headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., September 24, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Trump has withstood repeated scandals since taking office in 2017. House Democrats had considered, but never moved ahead with, pursuing articles of impeachment over Trump’s actions relating to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election aimed at boosting his candidacy.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the House has the power to impeach a president for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” No president has ever been removed from office through impeachment. Democrats currently control the House and Trump’s fellow Republicans control the Senate.
“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed a dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said on Tuesday.
Biden, who served as U.S. vice president from 2009 to 2017, is the current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Trump is seeking a second four-year term in the November 2020 election.
The United States has been giving military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The $391.5 million in aid at issue in the current controversy was approved by the U.S. Congress to help Ukraine deal with an insurgency by Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country.
Trump on Sunday acknowledged that he discussed Biden and Biden’s son Hunter, who had worked for a company drilling for gas in Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump on Monday denied trying to coerce Zelenskiy in the July 25 phone call to launch a corruption investigation into Biden and his son in return for the U.S. military aid.
Trump has offered differing reasons for why he wanted the money for Ukraine frozen, initially saying it was because of corruption in Ukraine and then saying it was because he wanted European countries like France and Germany, not the United States, to take the lead in providing assistance to Kiev.
The current controversy arose after a whistleblower from within the U.S. intelligence community brought a complaint with an internal watchdog relating to Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy. Even though federal law calls for such complaints to be disclosed to Congress, the Trump administration has refused to do so.
Pelosi on Tuesday said Trump’s actions had “seriously violated the Constitution,” and accused his administration of violations of federal law.
The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday, with no objections from Trump’s fellow Republicans, for a resolution calling for the whistleblower’s report to be sent to Congress. The House is due to vote on a similar non-binding resolution on Wednesday.
The Justice Department concluded that the whistleblower complaint did not need to be shared with Congress because the relevant law only covers conduct by intelligence officials, not the president, according to a legal analysis released by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
U.S. intelligence agencies and a special counsel named by the Justice Department previously concluded that Russia boosted Trump’s 2016 presidential election bid with a campaign of hacking and propaganda aimed at harming his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House is launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, setting up a dramatic constitutional clash just over a year before the presidential election.
"Today I'm announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry," Pelosi said at the Capitol late Tuesday afternoon. The inquiry marks just the fourth time in American history a president has faced a viable threat of impeachment.
The speaker has long resisted calls from many progressive lawmakers to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, but Democrats appear to have reached a breaking point over the administration's refusal to hand over a whistleblower complaint related to Mr. Trump's interaction with a foreign leader.
"This week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically," Pelosi said. "The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, September 24, 2019. AP
The current furor stems from a call Mr. Trump made to the president of Ukraine in July, in which he admitted discussing Joe Biden in the context of fighting "corruption" in the country. Mr. Trump and his allies, in particular personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, have accused Biden of pushing for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor while he was vice president in order to benefit his son. The prosecutor was widely seen as corrupt, and no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden has emerged.
In August, an anonymous member of the intelligence community filed a whistleblower complaint with the intelligence community inspector general, who determined it constituted an "urgent concern" requiring congressional notification under federal law. However, after consulting with the Justice Department and White House, the acting director of national intelligence came to a different conclusion, and has refused to provide the complaint to congressional committees.
Pelosi said the administration's refusal to provide the complaint was a "violation of the law" that "undermine both our national security and our intelligence."
One after another on Monday and Tuesday, Democrats from vulnerable House districts who had been resisting previous calls for impeachment came out in favor of initiating impeachment proceedings, citing concerns over Mr. Trump's potential pressuring of a foreign leader to investigate a domestic political opponent.
The president directed his acting chief of staff to hold off on releasing nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine shortly before the call in July, according to a senior administration official with direct knowledge of the administration's actions.
Mr. Trump, who is in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, reacted angrily to Pelosi's statement, calling it a "total Witch Hunt!" Earlier in the day he said he would release the transcript of the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that is part of the whistleblower complaint.
"You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo!" the president tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
That concession, however, did nothing to temper Democrats' demands for the complaint itself. Congressman Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the whistleblower wants to testify before the committee, and wrote a letter to attorneys representing the individual to request a voluntary interview on Thursday.
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