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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reportedly encouraged President Trump to release the memorandum of his controversial call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Two people familiar with the conversation told The Washington Post that McConnell encouraged the White House to release the reconstituted transcript to reinforce Trump’s claim that nothing improper happened during the conversation, explaining that speculation about the call had escalated too far.

McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

The conversation between Trump and Zelensky is at the heart of a burgeoning scandal surrounding the president’s dealings with Ukraine.

The memorandum released this week showed that Trump pressured Zelensky to open an investigation into the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, a top candidate running to challenge him in 2020.

A declassified whistleblower complaint also said that a future phone call or meeting between the two presidents “would depend on whether Zelensky showed willingness to ‘play ball,’” and that “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge” of the call expressed concern that Trump was using his office for his personal political gain.

The revelations from the memorandum and the complaint helped spur Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to announce the House would launch a formal impeachment investigation into Trump, with some Democrats alleging that Trump may have tied military aid to Zelensky’s compliance with his request.

McConnell went to the Senate floor earlier this week to praise the White House after it announced it would release the transcript.

“I also want to express my appreciation for President Trump's announcement that the White House will release tomorrow the complete, fully-declassified, and unredacted transcript of [his] phone conversation with President Zelensky,” he said. “I hope this will help to refocus the conversation away from reckless speculation and back toward the facts.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate...to-release-transcript-of-zelensky-call-report

 

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The internet is awash in historical explainers and hot takes trying to make sense of our sudden constitutional crisis. Marshalled on behalf of a range of competing viewpoints, the arguments are sprinkled with references to Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton—the three presidents who faced impeachment proceedings before Donald Trump. Which one applies to the current president and his apparent effort to enlist Ukraine in going after Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the 2020 election?

Turning to the past is understandable: A presidential impeachment cries out for historical context. The past is supposed to offer a map of sorts through what feels like an unfamiliar and treacherous adventure. But—as historians, ironically, are sometimes the first ones to point out—history isn’t actually a very good guide here. We’re in uncharted waters, and it’s best that we recognize that.

Why do the Johnson, Nixon and Clinton examples offer us so little direct help today? Every impeachment poses two discrete sets of questions for the House and Senate to consider. First, there are constitutional questions: Are impeachment and conviction justified? Second, there are political questions: Are impeachment and conviction possible? With every previous presidential impeachment, the answers have been different, and in the case of Trump and Ukraine, the answers are different still. We’ve simply never had a case before where the removal of a president was so well justified—while at the same time so obviously unlikely to happen.

The 1868 impeachment of Johnson grew out of a power struggle between a reactionary president and the “Radical Republicans” who held power in Congress. Having assumed the White House after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson—a Southerner who never left the union—warred with Republicans over a series of bills dealing with civil rights for the newly freed slaves and the terms for readmitting secessionist states.

The conflict crested when the Republicans passed the Tenure of Office Act, a law of uncertain constitutionality that barred the president from firing a member of his Cabinet unless the Senate approved a successor. Annoyed by Congress’ efforts to tie his hands, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln administration holdover, without securing Senate approval—creating a test case of the new legislation. Johnson’s defiance provoked the House to swiftly pass 11 articles of impeachment, most of which dealt with the Tenure of Office Act.

Johnson was duly impeached. But he ultimately dodged removal from office because moderate Republicans came to his aid in his Senate trial. With no vice president in place, his ouster would have awarded the presidency to Senate President Pro Tempore Benjamin Wade—a fiery radical unloved by the moderates. Johnson sent word that he would relent in his fights with the Republicans if they let him stay in office, helping him to prevail by just one vote.

In Johnson’s case, the constitutional questions—are impeachment and conviction justified?—were open to debate. Generally, historians today tend to think his impeachment wasn’t warranted (even if they mostly agree that the Republicans were correct on Reconstruction policy). As for the political questions—are impeachment and conviction possible?—the narrowness of Johnson’s acquittal makes clear that the undertaking was hardly doomed to futility. It was a meaningful exercise that could well have gone differently.

A century later, the case of Nixon and Watergate furnished a different set of answers. The House Judiciary Committee didn’t pass its articles of impeachment against Nixon until July 1974, a full two years (and one reelection campaign) after the failed burglary and bugging operation that began the unraveling of Nixon’s vast dirty tricks machine. In those two intervening years, a Senate investigative committee—along with the criminal trials of the apprehended burglars, and reporting by dogged journalists—pried loose an avalanche of evidence about abuses of power and obstruction of justice in the White House that slowly but steadily shifted public opinion. Those counts, as well as one for Nixon’s defiance of congressional subpoenas, were powerful enough to convince several Republicans to join the Democrats in supporting Nixon’s ouster.

In Nixon’s case, then, impeachment charges were clearly justified on constitutional grounds. And as Nixon discovered in August, when the Republicans’ elder statesman, Barry Goldwater, led a delegation to the White House to tell the president he had lost almost all his fellow Republicans’ support, conviction was not just possible but virtually assured. Politically, too, impeachment was a slam-dunk. Capitulating to reality, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

Clinton’s impeachment a quarter-century later, for allegedly lying about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, yielded still a different combination of answers. The probe of the president’s sex life by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was something of a rogue operation to begin with, since Starr had been appointed to look into a wholly discrete matter—a real estate investment Clinton had made while governor of Arkansas (on which Starr could come up with no case for impeachment). From the start, Starr’s inquiry lacked a fundamental legitimacy, and while many Washington pundits nonetheless cheered it on, majorities of the electorate saw it as a partisan, not a constitutional, undertaking.

Was Clinton’s removal from office ever a real possibility? Probably not. It is true that when news of his dalliance broke, some people thought his days were numbered. But within a matter of weeks, public opinion turned decisively against Starr and toward Clinton, where it would remain. After taking up impeachment in October, the House Republicans promptly lost congressional seats in the 1998 midterm elections—an almost unheard-of development—providing strong clues that their partisan crusade would founder in the Senate, where even some Republicans came to voice qualified support for the president. When Clinton finally won acquittal in February 1999, it seemed like a long-delayed foregone conclusion. The outcome drove home the recklessness of pursuing an impeachment that was bound to fail.

So, what precedent do these impeachment cases provide? Johnson’s removal from office was possible but probably not justified (and thus ill-advised). Nixon’s was both possible and justified (and thus effective). And Clinton’s was neither possible nor justified (and thus farcical). Removing Trump from office over the Ukraine scandal would be different from all of these cases. Unlike in Clinton’s case, the constitutional argument for it looks increasingly powerful: We have fairly damning evidence from the White House itself of a direct conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president about going after Biden. But unlike in Johnson’s and Nixon’s situations, removal is all but guaranteed never to happen—owing to the Republicans’ strong majority in the Senate and a disciplined tribalism of a ferocity that simply didn’t exist in the Nixon era.

Until now, many Democrats seemed to be reading the present through the past—in particular through the lens of the Republicans’ self-defeating anti-Clinton crusade. Their reading of history suggested that, given the sheer unlikelihood of actually dispatching Trump from the White House, it would be folly to press ahead with impeachment. That strategy seemed like a recipe for a bloody political fight, and even greater voter cynicism than we have now.

Only this past week did Democratic opinion dramatically shift. One reason seems to be an unwillingness to make the same mistake twice. Back in October 2016, evidence was mounting that Russia was meddling in the ongoing presidential election, along with suspicion that Trump’s campaign was encouraging or welcoming the interference. While Hillary Clinton spoke out bluntly, the administration at the time dithered, with President Barack Obama warning Vladimir Putin to “cut it out.” Everyone assumed Trump would lose the election and saw no reason to raise needless alarms. But the Ukraine scandal starkly evokes 2016—Trump seemed to have encouraged a foreign power to interfere on his behalf in an election—and Democrats grasped that they couldn’t run the same script as last time.

Still, to say the Democrats felt it necessary to finally begin impeachment proceedings isn’t to say the political risks are gone. Without any prospect of winning Republican supporters for Trump’s ouster, the Democrats’ ultimate objectives are troublingly unclear. Impeachment could galvanize voters against the president, but it could also backfire, as Bill Clinton’s impeachment did against Republicans. Or, like so much else in our polarized environment, it could just fail to move the needle.

No impeachment case in U.S. history yet has offered a perfect precedent. In fact, each one has reshaped our thinking about impeachment in the years afterward. The ill-advised impeachment of Johnson played a part in discouraging Congress from trying it again for more than 100 years. The successful revival of the impeachment machinery to use against Nixon, conversely, emboldened Republicans to try it against Clinton. And the abuse of the process against Clinton until now had deterred Democrats from using it against Trump. Whether the proceedings against Trump will open the floodgates to ever-more promiscuous uses of impeachment or serve to restrict its use only to the gravest of circumstances is unknowable. But one way or another, it is likely to redefine our politics for years to come.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/28/trump-impeachment-nixon-clinton-johnson-228754

 

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Michael D'Antonio is the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author with Peter Eisner of "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence." The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) It's a scene that's often depicted in Hollywood films: The bully picks on a smaller target and manages to paralyze everyone with fear. Then one day, a punch from an unexpected character draws blood. The bully's vulnerability becomes apparent and suddenly all those who trembled join to fight their former tormentor. Feared but not loved, the bully is vanquished.

In politics, as in Hollywood, those who'd rather pick a fight than compromise -- or, in Donald Trump's case, act with basic decency -- create the conditions for their own downfall. After Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry, there were early signs of the President's weakness. While the knockout punch has not been delivered, Republicans who were previously staunch allies began to waver.

On Friday, former Sen. Jeff Flake told NPR that at least 35 GOP Senators would support impeaching Trump if they were allowed to vote in secret. "Anybody who has sat through two years, as I have, of Republican luncheons realizes that there's not a lot of love for the President. There's a lot of fear of what it means to go against the President, but most Republican senators would not like to be dealing with this for another year or another five years," he said. Added to Democratic votes, Flake's estimate of 35 Republicans would make for the two-thirds majority required to remove Trump from office.

As Flake suggests, Republican officials may fear Trump but they do not like him. Consider the President's penchant for insults and demeaning nicknames and it's easy to agree with Flake's logic. Remember that then-candidate Trump mocked and disparaged Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as "Little Marco" and "Lyin' Ted" and you'll understand why they might have little sympathy for him now.

Trump's vulnerability was in clear view when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allowed the upper chamber to vote on a resolution urging the Trump administration to turn over the whistleblower complaint to Congress. The resolution passed unanimously in the GOP-controlled Senate.

The Senate is where the President will make his last stand if he's subjected to an impeachment trial. Under normal circumstances, a President could expect his party to stick by him, but Trump has acted so outside the norms of the executive office that there's no guarantee.

A few Republicans already broke with the President since Pelosi's announcement. Sen. Mitt Romney was the first to say he was troubled by the Ukraine controversy. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska noted there were "obviously some very troubling things" in the rough transcript of a call, which revealed Trump asked Ukraine's president to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden. After the White House released the rough transcript, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said it was "inappropriate."

Romney, it should be recalled, was subjected to an embarrassing pantomime of an interview for the secretary of state before Trump selected Rex Tillerson over him. Sasse, who will seek re-election in 2020, quietly accepted Trump's recent endorsement earlier this month. In light of the President's woes, Sasse seems unconcerned now about courting his wrath. These murmurs of dissent reflect an important shift among Republicans who heretofore quaked at the prospect of a blast from Trump's Twitter fingers or the humiliation of a sarcastic nickname.

The aggressive style that Trump has brought to national politics is consistent with the man he has always been. During his days as a real estate developer, and later as a media star, he provoked fights with everyone from former New York Mayor Ed Koch to comedian Rosie O'Donnell, never hesitating to insult an opponent's physical appearance, intelligence, or competence. It was in this time that he began explaining his aggression by saying that he responded when attacked -- and felt justified hitting back much harder.

Once he jumped into the 2016 race for president, the hit-harder argument became such a trademark for Trump that even his wife Melania would repeat it in her speeches. "As you may know by now," she said in April 2016, "when you attack him, he will punch back 10 times harder. No matter who you are, a man or a woman, he treats everyone equal."

Some people might think a 10-times-harder policy is intentionally threatening and disproportional. And of course, the President, who is notoriously thin-skinned and quick to take offense, often interprets fair criticism, petty snipes, and serious challenges as attacks that warrant public responses.

Combine his endless appetite for fighting -- "I like fights, all kinds of fights" he told me in 2014 -- and the victim's mentality he holds, and you get a man who finds himself in constant conflict. You also get a man who craves loyalty but inspires only fear and resentment.

The President achieved his dominance over the GOP by making just about everyone in the party afraid of him. This will work for as long as they believe he is truly powerful. Now that the cracks are beginning to show, he cannot count on anyone's genuine affection or loyalty. And he has given those who will control his fate reason to regard him as expendable.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/28/opinions/trumps-ruthless-attacks-impeachment-dantonio/index.html

 

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WASHINGTON -- From the moment Donald Trump became a national political figure, he has been shadowed by investigations and controversy.

They have been layered, lengthy and often inconclusive, leaving many Americans scandal-weary and numb to his behaviour. And with each charge against him, Trump has perfected the art of deflection, seemingly gaining strength by bullying and belittling those who have dared to take him on.

Now Trump is facing a high-velocity threat like none he's confronted before.

It has rapidly evolved from a process fight over a whistleblower complaint to an impeachment inquiry within two weeks. Much of the evidence is already in public view. A rough transcript of a phone call in which Trump asks Ukraine's president to help investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. The whistleblower's detailed letter alleging the White House tried to cover up the call, and possibly others.

Unlike special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation, which circled an array of people in Trump's orbit but not always the president himself, Trump doesn't have the benefit of distance. His words and his actions are at the centre of this investigation.

"The Mueller report , it was always Manafort this and his son that. There was a cascade of players," said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, referring to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. "This was just Donald Trump and a disturbing conversation with another world leader."

So, suddenly, Washington is different and the history of Trump's presidency has changed. By year's end, he could become only the third American president impeached by the House of Representatives.

That new reality caught Trump and his advisers off guard, according to people close to the president. If anything, they thought the spectre of impeachment had been lifted after the Mueller investigation ended without a clear determination that Trump had committed a crime.

The contours of that investigation played to Trump's strengths. Mueller spent two years in silence, allowing the president to fill the vacuum with assertions that the investigation was a "hoax" and a "witch hunt." The details of the investigation that did leak out were often complicated and focused on people in Trump's sphere. Even Mueller's pointed statement that he had not exonerated Trump did not seem to stick. There was ultimately plenty of smoke, but no smoking gun.

Numerous other Democratic inquiries appeared likely to meet a similar fate, including House investigation into Trump's business dealings, his tax returns and a variety of administration scandals. For many Americans, they were one big blur of investigations without any clarity of purpose.

Then the whistleblower gave the Democrats what they needed: a simple, easily explainable charge -- that the president sought a foreign government's help for personal political gain -- and his words to back it up.

For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and several Democratic moderates who had resisted calls for impeachment, the calculus shifted . It was now more of a risk to recoil from impeachment than charge ahead.

"What we're seeing right now is a completely different moment in the history of this country," said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla.

One thing that didn't change -- at least not immediately -- was the clear partisan divide over Trump's actions, both in Washington and across the country.

According to a one-day NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Wednesday, 49% of Americans approve of the House formally starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump. Among Democrats, 88% approve of the investigation, while 93% of Republicans disapprove.

Mike Staffieri, a retiree and Republican who lives just outside of Richmond, Virginia, said Democrats were trying to "throw enough poop at the wall and hope something sticks."

On Capitol Hill, some Trump allies concurred, confidently dismissing the impeachment inquiry as just another partisan effort to take down a president who is despised by many Democrats. That rough transcript of a phone call in which Trump presses Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to work with Attorney General William Barr and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on an investigation into Biden? It's just Trump being Trump, according to his backers.

"You've heard President Trump talk. That's President Trump," said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian and president of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas, said it's that enduring support from Republican lawmakers that currently separates Trump from Richard Nixon, who resigned in the midst of the Watergate impeachment inquiry because his party began to abandon him.

"The big difference between this and Watergate is that you had both Republicans and Democrats being deeply concerned about the president being involved in criminal wrongdoing," Updegrove said. "It was a bipartisan effort and you certainly don't have that here."

But it is early, compared with Watergate. There were small signs that some Republicans were trying to keep some measure of distance from the president. Some GOP lawmakers fled Washington for a fall break claiming they hadn't yet read the whistleblower's complaint. Others said they were open to learning more about the situation.

Trump's hold on the Republican Party makes it nearly impossible to foresee a scenario in which the GOP-controlled Senate convicts Trump if he were impeached by the Democratic-run House.

The president is acutely well aware that it's his party alone that can protect him. In the midst of the past week's firestorm, he tweeted to Republicans: "Stick together, play their game and fight hard Republicans."

He later deleted the tweet.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/impeachment-now-a-threat-like-no-other-trump-has-faced-1.4614918

 

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Sept. 29, 2019, 3:59 PM EDT
By Shannon Pettypiece, Kristen Welker, Monica Alba, Hallie Jackson and Kelly O'Donnell

WASHINGTON — Top White House aides plan to present President Donald Trump with a wide-ranging response strategy to the growing threat of impeachment in the coming days, following a week of mixed messaging and growing anxiety within Trump’s circle of advisers.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House counsel Pat Cipollone will be among those who present the president with the plan for a rapid-response effort that could come as early as Monday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Within the White House there has been a growing acknowledgement that a coordinated legal, political, and public relations messaging response is needed to help Trump as it becomes clear he is facing what may be the greatest threat to his presidency so far.

Trump himself declared “we are at war” during a closed-door speech to diplomats at the United Nations, with some aides describing the response effort as a war room fashioned after the Clinton White House’s response. But others are trying to downplay the seriousness of the threat, side-stepping the war room terminology.

"I just went through a war, this is a skirmish,” said Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow, who helped guide Trump through the Mueller investigation.

The White House had not yet responded to a request for comment Sunday afternoon.

It was unclear who would lead the internal effort, but one person expected to play a role was White House spokesman Steven Groves, who has spent time in both the White House counsel’s office helping manage the Mueller inquiry and the press shop as a spokesman on issues related to congressional investigations, the sources familiar with the matter said.

Advisers have modeled their response after lessons learned from the Clinton White House’s impeachment fight as well as their own response to the controversy over Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, which was widely viewed internally as a success, those sources said.

“We’re not going to get caught flat-footed, and we're not going to take it lying down,” said one source.

In the days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally launched an impeachment inquiry following revelations that Trump solicited help from the president of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, there has been widespread anxiety in the White House, with people familiar with the situation describing the mood as “shell-shocked.”

The White House is planning to rely heavily on outside allies in Congress and with the campaign. Some advisers have mused about bringing back some of Trump’s former aides who have been in the trenches with him before, such as former White House strategist Steven Bannon or campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

The president’s campaign feels well-equipped to respond to an impeachment threat, after two years of counter-punching on the Russia investigation and former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

On Friday, the president’s re-election team previewed a potential strategy: the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account blasted out a new video slamming former Vice President Joe Biden on Ukraine. Less than an hour later, the campaign rolled out a press release announcing a $10 million ad buy on cable and digital for the 30-second spot.

Senior campaign officials indicated the organization’s rapid-response team will continue to produce and roll out impeachment inquiry material on every platform, with a special focus on social media and fundraising messaging.

“Our war room has been fighting back on everything in real time,” said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh.

Last week, in the 24 hours surrounding the announcement of the impeachment inquiry, the Trump campaign raked in $5 million from its targeted impeachment appeals.

Aides point out that much of the language in Trump’s 2020 solicitation emails often foreshadows White House talking points on impeachment, another sign that the campaign’s fully staffed apparatus is often better prepared to blast out political messaging.

Trump also has help from the Republican National Committee, which has sent blast emails to reporters attacking Democrats and responding in real time to the latest allegations, and said it had posted more than three dozen video clips on social media and made 150 impeachment-related bookings on TV and radio nationally and in target states.

A key part of the messaging is already taking shape. Trump’s allies have sought to paint the Democrats as focused solely on impeachment at the cost of domestic policy issues like gun control and health care, an issue that helped Democrats pick up ground in 2018. Trump will make a health care speech Thursday attacking Democratic plans.

But there was little chance any progress was going to be made on those issues even before the renewed impeachment push by House Democrats, who have already passed measures of their own on guns and health care.

Another figure playing a role in Trump’s defense is his personal lawyer, Sekulow, a religious liberties attorney who helped lead Trump’s legal response to Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Just months after the special counsel’s investigation slid out of focus, Sekulow was back defending Trump in the latest controversy.

“I know how to read a situation and to deal with facts as they develop,” Sekulow said told NBC News, adding: “I'm going to meet the challenge from the outside as appropriate."

Full coverage: Trump impeachment inquiry

 

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Washington (CNN) There is a tentative agreement for the anonymous whistleblower who filed a complaint containing allegations about President Donald Trump's conduct to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday, confirming CNN's previous reporting.

CNN reported on Wednesday that the potential testimony is dependent on the whistleblower's attorneys getting security clearance.

Asked on ABC's "This Week" whether he had reached an agreement with the whistleblower and his attorneys to come before the committee, Schiff said: "Yes, we have."

"And as (acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph) Maguire promised during the hearing, that whistleblower will be allowed to come in and come in without ... a minder from the Justice Department or from the White House to tell the whistleblower what they can and cannot say. We will get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower," he said.

The California Democrat added that his committee is currently "taking all the precautions we can to make sure that we do so -- we allow that testimony to go forward in a way that protects the whistleblower's identity, because as you can imagine, when the President is showing threats like, 'We ought to treat these people who expose my wrongdoing as we used to treat traitors and spies,' and we used to execute traitors and spies. You can imagine the security concerns here."

The whistleblower is at the center of a fast-moving scandal in Washington surrounding a complaint made about Trump's communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to their complaint, Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden -- his potential 2020 political rival -- and his son, Hunter Biden, though there is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden. The complaint also alleges a coverup by the White House of the July 25 phone conversation.

Democratic House leaders opened an impeachment inquiry into Trump in the wake of the complaint.

Schiff said Sunday on ABC, as well as NBC's "Meet the Press," that he expects the whistleblower to testify "very soon," adding that the committee is now focused on the security clearances for the whistleblower's attorneys as well as the whistleblower's protection.

Mark Zaid, the attorney for the anonymous whistleblower, tweeted Sunday that discussions are continuing between lawyers for the whistleblower and House and Senate officials about testimony by the person.

Zaid said "protecting whistleblower's identity is paramount" and that "discussions continue to occur to coordinate & finalize logistics but no date/time has yet been set."

During his interview with ABC, Schiff said, "We will keep, obviously, riding shotgun to make sure that the acting director doesn't delay that clearance process."

Schiff wrote a letter to Maguire making the clearance request on Wednesday, after the whistleblower's lawyers agreed to meet with lawmakers if the security clearance condition is met and requested assistance from the acting DNI.
The process is already underway to ensure the lawyers have access to any relevant classified information, a source familiar with the situation previously told CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/29/poli...imony-house-intelligence-committee/index.html

 

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Topline: The whistleblower made an agreement to testify before Congress, House intelligence chair Adam Schiff said on Sunday, but the whistleblower’s lawyers claimed “the events of the past week”⁠—including President Trump’s rhetoric⁠—raised “serious concerns” for “our client’s personal safety.”

• Andrew Bakaj, the lead lawyer for the whistleblower, wrote in a letter to acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire that Trump’s demands to identify the person who gave information to the whistleblower “does nothing to assuage our concerns.”
• Bakaj was referencing a September 26 statement made by Trump at the United Nations.
• Trump said the person who informed the whistleblower was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days” spies were treated “a little differently.”
• Trump’s statements stunned those present, according to the New York Times.
• Bakaj’s letter also mentioned a $50,000 bounty put out for the whistleblower’s identity, adding to concerns the whistleblower could be in more danger. “We expect this situation to worsen,” wrote Bakaj.

What we don’t know: When the whistleblower will testify. Schiff said the House intelligence committee is waiting for a security clearance from Maguire. But maintaining the whistleblower’s anonymity while getting him in and out of a hearing room presents a set of logistical hurdles, according to the Wall Street Journal.

What to watch for: How long the impeachment investigation takes. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday it would last “as long as the Intelligence Committee follows the facts.”

Chief critic: President Trump. He was active on Twitter over the weekend by resharing videos from Fox News supporters. He also attacked Pelosi, Schiff, the whistleblower, decried the investigation as a “witch hunt” and even warned of a “civil war” if he was removed from office.

Key background: The whistleblower’s report, filed August 12 and released September 26, alleges that Trump sought help from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The report and a memo documenting a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky are now the basis of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. The whistleblower’s identity has remained mostly anonymous, except for a New York Times report that revealed the individual is a male Central Intelligence Agency officer.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisett...but-lawyers-fear-for-his-safety/#25149d213ba7

 

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Washington (CNN) Lawyers for a whistleblower who accused Donald Trump of pressuring Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 election warn that the President's threats pose a grave risk to their client's safety.

Trump meanwhile escalated his attacks on the whistleblower -- demanding to meet his "accuser" face to face during a day of rage-filled tweets about the Democratic attempt to impeach him. The President's anger spilled over during a day of rage-filled tweets Sunday in which he selectively quoted a supporter who said he was afraid of a "Civil War-like fracture" in the country if Trump is forced from office.

The extraordinary spectacle of the President -- the titular head of the US legal system -- threatening a potential witness in a case against him risks being seen as an attempt to obstruct the investigation. It also cuts against the principle that whistleblowers deserve anonymity and protection, representing another dark twist in an administration that has constantly tested the boundaries of political propriety.

On another frenetic day of political exchanges, Democrats sought to engineer a fast start to their impeachment efforts as their chances of political success hinge on early momentum to keep the White House off balance.

Trump however led a ferocious fight back over the weekend, lashing out at Democrats, the media and the whistleblower as some of his top allies battled through a series of contentious appearances on Sunday talk shows.

On Sunday night, it emerged that lawyers for the whistleblower wrote to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to express "serious concerns" for their client.

"The events of the past week have heightened our concerns that our client's identity will be disclosed publicly and that, as a result, our client will be put in harm's way," the lawyers wrote in a letter date Saturday, September 28, before directly citing a comment by Trump last week.

On that occasion, the President said the person that gave the whistleblower the information was "close to a spy" and hinted at the possibility of execution for such behavior.

The lawyers noted that Trump was not referring directly to the whistleblower, but said that fact did not assuage their concerns and alleged that several unnamed parties had offered a $50,000 bounty for information on their client's identity.

"Unfortunately, we expect this situation to worsen, and to become even more dangerous for our client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter," the lawyers wrote in a letter obtained by CNN's Pamela Brown.
The letter from the lawyers emerged after House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff Sunday said he had reached a deal to secure testimony from the whistleblower. An attorney for the whistleblower said discussions were continuing.

Trump, meanwhile, kept up his bid to discredit the whistleblower.

"I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the "Whistleblower." Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!" Trump tweeted Sunday.

The President also called for Schiff to be questioned for fraud and treason.

Trump also tweeted about the "Civil War-like fracture" comment by Robert Jeffress, a supporter on Fox News, prompting Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger to offer a rebuke.

"I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant," Kinzinger tweeted.

'Little Nancy Drew novel'
The White House, which seemed caught off guard in a wild week that saw House Speaker Nancy Pelosi open the impeachment inquiry, hit back hard in a bid to discredit allegations that the President abused his power by seeking dirt from Ukraine on a potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden.

"The President of the United States is the whistleblower," senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller said on "Fox News Sunday."
"And this individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government," he said, blasting the complaint as a "little Nancy Drew novel."

But Pelosi told her caucus on a conference call Sunday that they should try to be non-partisan about the impeachment process.
"This isn't about politics. It's not about partisanship. It's about patriotism," she said.

"The idea that this has anything to do with whether you like (Trump) or not -- forget that. That's about the election. This is about the Constitution."

The speedy escalation of the political war was remarkable, given that it is only a week since Schiff declared Trump had "crossed the Rubicon" in his dealings with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Democrats and the White House are now locked in a historic confrontation that will test the US political system to its limits and will shape the destiny of the 2020 election.

Democrats train narrow focus on Ukraine
Democrats are under pressure to produce a concise impeachment probe that keeps a tight focus on Trump's alleged wrongdoing and makes a clear case to Americans.

To that end, Pelosi has made Schiff the primary face of the investigation after a Judiciary Committee hearing with Trump's ex-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski this month turned into a farce.

Speed is important because a failure to decide whether the full House will vote on Articles of Impeachment within months could overshadow Democratic primaries when the party's candidates hope to be talking about health care and economic inequality -- issues that preoccupy voters -- rather than Trump.

Still, any sign that Democrats are rushing could play into GOP claims that they have decided to impeach the President wherever the evidence leads.

While Republicans are unlikely to vote to convict Trump in a Senate trial, Democrats hope to persuade general election voters he's unfit for office and to heap pressure on GOP Senate candidates in swing states who may not relish a vote to acquit Trump.
But the longer Trump can drag the impeachment intrigue out, the better it may be for his political fortunes.

With time, he can crank up efforts to discredit the impeachment probe with the help of the conservative media machine - a tactic that worked well in shaping perceptions of the Mueller probe. The President will also seek to change the subject -- perhaps with big ticket foreign policy goals that could bolster his argument that he's doing the people's business and should not be impeached.

The White House will also likely make expansive executive privilege claims and fight in court to frustrate Democrats and build public frustration with the impeachment saga. And the President can put claims that Democrats are trying to subvert the result of the 2016 election at the center of his rallies to fire up his loyal supporters as 2020 approaches.

Action looming on Capitol Hill
As the pace heats up in Washington, former US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker — who resigned last week — plans to appear for a deposition before three House committees on Thursday.

Volker is a long-time Republican foreign policy hand who was close to late Sen. John McCain — the most prominent GOP critic of the President. This could be a wild card moment for the White House, which may seek to exert privilege over the ambassador's dealings with Ukraine on behalf of Trump.

Schiff said Sunday that he also expects the whistleblower to testify "very soon" following negotiations focusing partly on how to preserve his or her anonymity and security.

"We will get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower," he said on ABC News "This Week."

CNN reported on Wednesday the potential testimony is dependent on the whistleblower's attorneys getting security clearances.
In the complaint, judged credible by a Trump-appointed intelligence community inspector general, the whistleblower alleged the President tried to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election and the White House tried to cover it up.

Trump has repeatedly denied that he did anything wrong, saying his call with Zelensky was "perfect." He has also dismissed allegations he threatened to withhold US military aid to Ukraine if Kiev refused to investigate Biden.

Trump supporters were out in force on the Sunday talk shows.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, in a contentious exchange with Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" tried to make the issue about Biden and his son Hunter who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm when his father was vice president.

"When the company that's paying that money is under investigation, guess what? Daddy comes running to the rescue. The vice president of the United States comes running in and says, 'Fire that prospector,'" Jordan said.

Tapper replied: "That's not what happened. Sir, sir, that's not what happened," adding that the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and activists in Ukraine all wanted the prosecutor dismissed because he was not pursuing corruption.
There is no evidence that Biden or his son did anything wrong.

There was one note of criticism for Trump from an unexpected quarter on Sunday. Tom Bossert, who served as White House homeland security chief, faulted the President's handling of Ukraine.

"I'm deeply disturbed by it as well and this entire mess has me frustrated," Bossert, now an ABC contributor, told "This Week."
"I hope that everyone can sift through the evidence and be very careful, as I've seen a lot of rush to judgment this week. That said, it is a bad day and a bad week for this president and for this country if he is asking for political dirt on an opponent."

The frenzied nature of Sunday's exchanges reflected the fact that no one in Washington can really predict the political impact of the impeachment drama to come.

After all, conventional wisdom on the likelihood of such a process and the wisdom of political maneuvers by Trump and Pelosi shifted several times last week. The only certainty is that Washington is entering a fraught period that could make the vitriol of the last two-and-a-half years sound like a warmup.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/politics/trump-democrats-impeachment-ukraine-investigation/index.html

 

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...-release-phone-calls-without-kremlin-n1060551

 

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49887733

 

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网上看到的：
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It was “RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA” and now it’s “UKRAINE UKRAINE UKRAINE!”
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WASHINGTON — President Trump, already facing impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, publicly called on China on Thursday to examine former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as well, an extraordinary request for help from a foreign power that could benefit him in next year’s election.

“China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he left the White House to travel to Florida. His request came just moments after he discussed upcoming trade talks with China and said that “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

The president’s call for Chinese intervention means that Mr. Trump and his attorney general have now solicited assistance in discrediting the president’s political opponents from Ukraine, Australia, Italy and, according to one report, Britain. In speaking so publicly on Thursday, a defiant Mr. Trump pushed back against critics who have called such requests an abuse of power, essentially arguing that there was nothing wrong with seeking foreign help to fight corruption.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has made little effort to hide actions or statements that critics called outrageous violations of norms and standards. And yet because he does them in public, they seem to stir less blowback than if they had been done behind closed doors. Among other things, he repeatedly called on his own Justice Department to investigate his Democratic foes and eventually fired his first attorney general for not protecting him from the Russia investigation.

the impeachment inquiry into the president’s request for investigations into Mr. Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and other Democrats during a July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the same time Mr. Trump was withholding $391 million in American aid.

During a daylong, closed interview, Kurt D. Volker, who resigned last week as the Trump administration’s special envoy to Ukraine, told House staff members about his interactions with the Ukrainians and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who has been vigorously lobbying for Ukrainian investigations into Democrats.

Mr. Trump’s comments on Thursday set off a wave of criticism from Democrats, who said he brazenly implicated himself.

“What Donald Trump just said on the South Lawn of the White House was this election’s equivalent of his infamous ‘Russia, if you’re listening’ moment from 2016 — a grotesque choice of lies over truth and self over the country,” Kate Bedingfield, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement.

camera called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email servers. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said. The investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III later determined that just hours later Russian hackers made their first effort to break into servers used by Mrs. Clinton’s personal office.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the House Intelligence Committee chairman leading the impeachment inquiry, said the president’s latest comments were further evidence of his betrayal of duty.

“The president of the United States encouraging a foreign nation to interfere and help his campaign by investigating a rival is a fundamental breach of the president’s oath of office,” he told reporters.

Mrs. Clinton weighed in as well. “Someone should inform the president that impeachable offenses committed on national television still count,” she wrote on Twitter.

fired by Mr. Trump, said the president behaved as if acting in the light of day would transform corrupt actions into innocent ones. “The president is trying to hypnotize the American people into believing that it can’t be wrong if he says it out loud,” she said.

“The White House counsel in a case like this would find the nearest window and jump out,” said Robert F. Bauer, who served as President Barack Obama’s top lawyer and supports Mr. Biden. “There’s no way to defend it. No way. None.”

Republicans did not even try on Thursday, and some disaffected colleagues said they should speak out against the president. “He’s asking foreign governments to interfere in our election,” former Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois, who is waging a long-shot battle for the Republican nomination, wrote on Twitter. “Right out in the open. Because he thinks he can get away with it. He’s unfit. He’s dangerous.” he wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Trump has insisted that his July conversation with Mr. Zelensky was “perfect” even after a reconstructed transcript of the call released by the White House showed him imploring the newly inaugurated Ukrainian leader to “do us a favor” by investigating the Bidens and other Democrats shortly after Mr. Zelensky discussed his need for more American aid to counter Russian aggression.

Undaunted by criticism, Mr. Trump repeated that request on Thursday morning. “I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens,” Mr. Trump said. “Because nobody has any doubt that they weren’t crooked.”

Even as he seeks investigations by Ukraine and China, the president and Mr. Barr have also solicited help from Australia and Italy to uncover information undermining the origin of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. The Times of London has reported that Mr. Trump sought help from Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, a report that has not been denied by either the White House or the British government.

In Ukraine, Mr. Biden’s son Hunter made $50,000 a month on the board of an energy company. As vice president, his father pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor whose office oversaw investigations into the company’s owner. But by the time the elder Mr. Biden acted, there was no public evidence that the prosecutor was actively pursuing an investigation, and no evidence has emerged that the vice president, who was carrying out Obama administration policy, was motivated by his son’s business interests.

In calling for an investigation of American citizens by China, a repressive Communist government with no rule of law, Mr. Trump referred to a business deal Hunter Biden was in that involved a fund drawing investment from the government-owned Bank of China. The fund was announced in late 2013, days after Hunter Biden flew to China aboard Air Force Two with the vice president, who was in the midst of a diplomatic mission.

The president said on Thursday that Hunter Biden was not qualified for that business, noting that he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. “He got kicked out of the Navy,” Mr. Trump said. “All of a sudden he’s getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff.”

Mr. Trump said he had not asked President Xi Jinping for assistance. “But it’s certainly something we can start thinking about because I’m sure that President Xi does not like being under that kind of scrutiny.”

Mr. Trump’s suggestion came as senior Chinese officials were set to come to Washington next week for another round of trade negotiations. The two countries, locked in a trade war, are hoping to make progress toward a deal after a breakdown in talks in May, leading to an escalation of tariffs.

Mr. Biden is not the only candidate in the race with a child with business in China. Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka, a senior White House adviser, has received valuable trademarks from China even after she closed her brand in 2018 because of worsening sales and questions of conflicts of interest.