Impeachapalooza

A blog about the impeachment of Donald Trump

  • New Trump-Ukraine Call Transcript Raises More Questions

    November 15, 2019

    Evan Vucci/AP

    Minutes before the start of the House’s second public impeachment hearing, the White House released the rough transcript of President Donald Trump’s April phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected president of Ukraine. The release of that conversation—which took place three months before the now infamous July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Zelensky to do him a “favor” by investigating Trump’s political enemies—appears to be intended by the White House to help Trump’s case. Instead, it raises new questions about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into aiding his personal political fortunes.

    According to the newly released document, which isn’t a verbatim transcription, Trump used the April 21 call to congratulate Zelensky on his electoral victory. During the conversation, Zelensky repeatedly invited Trump to his inauguration—a key request from a US ally hoping to demonstrate that it had strong international support in its ongoing conflict with Russia. Trump responded that he would “look into it” but added that in any case, “we will have somebody, at a minimum, at a very, very high level, and they will be with you.”

    But despite promising to send a “very high level” official, Trump reportedly blocked Vice President Mike Pence from attending the inauguration, sending Energy Secretary Rick Perry instead. Here’s how the Washington Post explained it in a story last month:

    President Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.

    Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May—an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar—when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.

    […]

    Pence’s staff was weighing whether the vice president should lead a delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration in May, an important vote of confidence for the new Ukrainian president whose nation has come to view the United States as a bulwark against Russian aggression. Russia has annexed Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and continues to foment a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.  

    The date of the inauguration had been in flux, the White House still had not dispatched advance staff and Secret Service to Ukraine, and no visit had been officially confirmed when the president instructed Pence not to attend, according to officials. A current and former official confirmed Trump’s instructions, which were also mentioned in the whistleblower report.

    After the transcript’s release this morning, House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff addressed Trump directly during the hearing. “I hope you will explain to the country today why it was—after this call and while the vice president was making plans to attend the inauguration—that you instructed the vice president not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration,” said Schiff.

    During the April call, Trump invited Zelensky to visit the White House, an invitation the Ukrainian eagerly accepted. The transcript of that conversation contains no indication of Trump demanding the investigations he asked for in the July call with Zelensky. But text messages between Kurt Volker, then the US special representative for Ukraine negotiations, and Andrey Yermak, a key adviser to Zelensky—released by House investigators in early October—demonstrate that there was a clear understanding between the two countries: A date for a White House meeting between the two leaders would be set only after Zelensky convinced Trump that he would launch the investigations.

    Here’s the rough transcript of the April 21 call: 

     

  • Diplomat Who Allegedly Overheard Trump-Sondland Call Will Testify

    November 13, 2019

    Earlier today, Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, dropped a bombshell during the first day of the House’s impeachment hearings. Taylor testified that one of his staffers overheard a phone call between President Donald Trump and US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, in which Trump asked Sondland about the politically motivated investigations Trump wanted Ukraine to pursue. NBC News reports that the staffer in question is David Holmes, who is the counselor for political affairs at the US Embassy in Ukraine. Holmes was just added to the House’s calendar to testify in a closed session on Friday. 

    Per Taylor’s earlier testimony, Holmes accompanied Sondland to a restaurant on July 26 after Sondland met with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. At the restaurant, Sondland called Trump to tell him about the meeting, and Holmes overheard the president asking Sondland about “the investigations” into Trump’s political enemies. After the call, Holmes asked Sondland what the president thinks of Ukraine, to which Sondland “responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which [Trump personal attorney Rudy] Giuliani was pressing for,” according to Taylor. 

  • Bombshell Testimony: Trump Asked Sondland About Ukrainian “Investigations”

    November 13, 2019

    President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Evan Vucci/AP

    During his opening testimony on the first day of the House impeachment hearings, Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, dropped a bombshell: A member of his staff had overheard a phone call between President Trump and US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland in which the president asked Sondland about “the investigations” and Sondland replied “that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.” After the call concluded, according to Taylor, the staffer “asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine.” Taylor testified that Sondland “responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which [Trump personal attorney Rudy] Giuliani was pressing for.”  

    According to Taylor, this incident took place on July 26—the day after the infamous phone call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue investigations related to Trump’s political enemies, including Joe Biden and his son. Taylor noted that he understood “investigations” to be a short-hand term used by Sondland for the politically motivated probes Trump wanted the Ukrainians to pursue.

    Taylor added that he only learned of the July 26 phone call between Trump and Sondland after he gave his initial deposition on October 22 and that he has since reported it to the State Department’s legal adviser and the House Intelligence Committee. 

    Here’s Taylor’s full description of that July 26 restaurant phone call: 

    On September 25 at the UN General Assembly session in New York City, President Trump met President Zelenskyy face-to-face. He also released the transcript of the July 25 call. (The United States gave the Ukrainians virtually no notice of the release, and they were livid.) Although this was the first time I had seen the details of President Trump’s July 25 call with President Zelenskyy, in which he mentioned Vice President Biden, I had come to understand well before then that “investigations” was a term that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland used to mean matters related to the 2016 elections, and to investigations of Burisma and the Bidens.

    Last Friday, a member of my staff told me of events that occurred on July 26. While Ambassador Volker and I visited the front, this member of my staff accompanied Ambassador Sondland. Ambassador Sondland met with Mr. Yermak.

    Following that meeting, in the presence of my staff at a restaurant, Ambassador Sondland called President Trump and told him of his meetings in Kyiv. The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone, asking Ambassador Sondland about “the investigations.” Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.

    Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for. At the time I gave my deposition on October 22, I was not aware of this information. I am including it here for completeness. As the Committee knows, I reported this information through counsel to the State Department’s Legal Adviser, as well as to counsel for both the Majority and the Minority on the Committee. It is my understanding that the Committee is following up on this matter.

    Here’s the full transcript of Taylor’s opening statement:

  • In Opening Statement, George Kent Says Giuliani Sabotaged US-Ukraine Policy

    November 13, 2019

    Alex Brandon/AP

    George Kent, the top State Department official in charge of Ukraine relations, said in his testimony at Wednesday morning’s impeachment hearing that Rudy Giuliani hijacked US foreign policy toward Ukraine in an effort to generate politically motivated investigations that would benefit his client, President Donald Trump. And he said that Giuliani and his associates spread false information peddled by corrupt Ukrainian officials with an ax to grind.

    “Over the course of 2018-2019, I became increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani and others, including his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to run a campaign to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch and other officials at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv,” he said. Kent said that former Ukrainian prosecutors Victor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko “were now peddling false information in order to exact revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct, including U.S. diplomats, Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, and reform-minded civil society groups in Ukraine.”

    Kent suggested that Giuliani led the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. “In mid-August, it became clear to me that Giuliani’s efforts to gin up politically motivated investigations were now infecting US engagement with Ukraine, leveraging President Zelensky’s desire for a White House meeting,” he said.

    Kent said that he voiced concerns about Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company whose co-founder had come under investigation for corruption. But he stressed that he “did not witness any efforts by any US official to shield Burisma from scrutiny.”

    Earlier in his statement, Kent described his background as a career foreign service officer representing the third generation in a family of career public servants.

    Watch Kent’s testimony here:

    Here is a transcript of Kent’s testimony:

  • Nunes Kicks Off Impeachment Hearing by Smearing the Witnesses

    November 13, 2019

    Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, delivered a blistering defense of President Donald Trump on Wednesday that was heavy on performance, but light on substantive details.Pete Marovich/Getty

    One of President Trump’s most loyal allies delivered his opening salvo at Wednesday’s blockbuster impeachment hearing—and it wasn’t pretty.

    Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, bashed Democrats for airing a “televised, theatrical performance,” and he smeared the witnesses as having “agreed witting or unwittingly to participate” in the “low-rent, Ukrainian sequel” to the Democrats’ “Russia hoax.” 

    Directly addressing the witnesses, long-serving State Department officials George Kent and William Taylor, Nunes mockingly congratulated them for emerging from the committee’s closed depositions, which had been conducted over the past few weeks, to be “cast” in Wednesday’s public hearing.

    Nunes compared the private hearings, which are common during congressional investigations and were used by Republicans during their probe into the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, to “star chamber auditions,” which took place, he said, solely as a Democratic maneuver to oust Trump from office after a “three-year-long operation by the Democrats, the corrupt media, and partisan bureaucrats” failed to do so.

    Nunes’ aggressive attacks did not add much credibility to Trump’s defense, which has oscillated between denying the central fact of the case—that he pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals—and arguing that this action might be unusual, but does not merit impeachment. Neal Katyal, who served as the Obama administration’s solicitor general, said on Twitter that Nunes “reminds [him] of a bad Supreme Court advocate, hiding all the flaws in a case by pretending they just don’t exist.”

    “It lacks credibility,” Katyal wrote. “Everyone knows what [Trump] did was wrong, the question is simply if it is impeachable.”

    Right-wing Twitter, naturally, had a much different view of Nunes’ performance:

  • Trump Says Whistleblower Should Be Investigated. Here’s Why That’s Terrifying.

    November 11, 2019

    President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill BarrOliver Contreras/Sipa via AP

    This morning, Donald Trump took to Twitter to demand that the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal—along with the whistleblower’s attorney and House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—be “investigared [sic] for fraud!” There is, of course, no known evidence that any of those individuals has committed fraud. Rather, the misspelled tweet is a horrifying escalation of the president’s campaign to intimidate and retaliate against the whistleblower.

    It’s tempting to dismiss Trump’s Twitter bluster as yet another empty threat with few consequences. It’s also wrong. Time and again, the president has shown a willingness to push the Justice Department and the FBI—and even foreign governments—to investigate and prosecute those he sees as political enemies.

    This is, after all, what the Ukraine scandal is all about. Trump and his cronies repeatedly demanded, in public and in private, that Ukraine investigate Democrats. And it nearly worked. According to the New York Times, the Ukrainian president was just days away from announcing the probes Trump wanted when the White House conspiracy began to unravel. In October, the president publicly asked China to investigate the Bidens; later, a top US trade official refused to answer questions from CNN about whether the administration raised the issue during subsequent negotiations with that country.

    There’s ample evidence that Trump sees the DOJ as his personal law firm and the attorney general as his private attorney. Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, testified that in 2017, Trump said words to the effect of, “You’re telling me that Bobby and Jack didn’t talk about investigations? Or Obama didn’t tell Eric Holder who to investigate?” (Bobby Kennedy was JFK’s attorney general; Holder was Obama’s.) Indeed, one of the most chilling parts of the rough transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is Trump’s request that Zelensky discuss the Biden allegations not just with Rudy Giuliani, but also with Attorney General Bill Barr—an indication, perhaps, that Trump hoped to use the US justice system to prosecute the Democratic frontrunner.

    In addition, Trump has spent much of the past several years publicly calling for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. According to the Mueller Report, Trump in 2017 conveyed those desires directly to his then-attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioning Clinton’s emails as one of the topics he thought the DOJ should be investigating:

    On October 16, 2017, the President met privately with Sessions and said that the Department of Justice was not investigating individuals and events that the President thought the Department should be investigating. According to contemporaneous notes taken by [White House aid Rob] Porter, who was at the meeting, the President mentioned Clinton’s emails and said, “Don’t have to tell us, just take [a] look.” Sessions did not offer any assurances or promises to the President that the Department of Justice would comply with that request. Two days later, on October 18, 2017, the President tweeted, “Wow, FBI confirms report that James Comey drafted letter exonerating Crooked Hillary Clinton long before investigation was complete. Many people not interviewed, including Clinton herself. Comey stated under oath that he didn’t do this-obviously a fix? Where is Justice Dept?” On October 29, 2017, the President tweeted that there was “ANGER & UNITY” over a “lack of investigation” of Clinton and “the Comey fix,” and concluded: “DO SOMETHING!”

    Mueller notes that Sessions didn’t promise Trump that the DOJ “would comply with that request.” But a month after this meeting, Sessions directed John Huber, the US attorney in Utah, to review the department’s handling of various allegations about Clinton and determine whether an investigation should be opened, and whether a special counsel should be appointed. Huber’s probe reportedly includes the same Clinton email controversy that Trump had wanted investigated. Several weeks later, Trump again spoke with Sessions and, according to notes taken by an aid, said in an apparent reference to Clinton, “[Lawyer Alan] Dershowitz says POTUS can get involved. Can order AG to investigate. I don’t want to get involved. I’m not going to get involved. I’m not going to do anything or direct you to do anything. I just want to be treated fairly.” All of which sounds a bit like Trump’s insistence to Gordon Sondland that there was “no quid pro quo” regarding Ukraine.

    Naturally, it does not stop there. Trump has also demanded that law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe be investigated, even threatening former FBI Director James Comey with jail time. That probe, too, is moving forward; it recently grew into a criminal investigation, though it’s unclear who federal prosecutors are targeting. According to the Times, it is being “closely overseen” by Barr.

  • Jim Jordan Joins the Intelligence Committee as a New Lawsuit Says He Shrugged Off Sexual Misconduct Claim at Ohio State

    November 8, 2019

    Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, speaks to media after Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper arrived to testify as part of the House impeachment inquiry.Patrick Semansky/AP

    Ardent Trump defender Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is joining the House Intelligence Committee tasked with marshaling the impeachment inquiry. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Cali.) delivered the news on Twitter, noting that Jordan would “continue fighting for fairness and truth” on what he called the “Impeachment Committee.” 

    On Friday, we caught a glimpse of Jordan’s line of questioning in the impeachment inquiry when former top White House National Security Council Russia adviser Fiona Hill’s deposition was released. But a day earlier, allegations that Jordan turned a blind eye to reports of abuse during his tenure as an Ohio State University wrestling coach came back to haunt him.  

    Jordan’s so-called pursuit of fairness in the impeachment inquiry is complicated by claims from former wrestlers that Jordan knew of and ignored complaints that the team doctor was sexually abusive for decades. The latest accusation arose from a referee who said he told Jordan and then-head coach Russ Hellickson in 1994 that OSU team doctor Richard Strauss masturbated in front of him in a shower after a wrestling match. It was documented in a lawsuit filed on Thursday by 43 former sexual abuse survivors against Ohio State—the suit is the 13th of its kind.

    “Yeah, that’s Strauss,” Jordan and Hellickson allegedly said at the time, shrugging off the incident.

    As NBC News reports:

    John Doe 42 said that when he informed Jordan and Hellickson about what happened, their response was, “Yeah, yeah, we know.”

    “It was common knowledge what Strauss was doing, so the attitude was it is what it is,” he told NBC News. “I wish Jim, and Russ, too, would stand up and do the right thing and admit they knew what Strauss was doing, because everybody knew what he was doing to the wrestlers. What was a shock to me is that Strauss tried to do that to me. He was breaking new ground by going after a ref.”

    The scope of Strauss’ abuse was an “open secret” at Ohio State: An independent investigation found that at least 177 former OSU athletes were sexually abused by Strauss over the course of two decades. The report revealed that Ohio State employees knew about the abuse allegations at the time but the investigation couldn’t make “conclusive determinations” about whether specific coaches knew of complaints against Strauss, who killed himself in 2005. 

    Ohio State officials also revealed in October that they were aware of 1,429 instances of fondling and 47 rape allegations against the abusive doctor. Eight former wrestlers have claimed that Jordan knew of the allegations but failed to intervene. That includes Dunyasha Yetts, who wrestled at Ohio State in 1993 and 1994, who claims that he told Jordan directly about a personal incident in which Strauss tried to take off Yetts’ shorts. Yetts also told NBC News that he and other teammates told Jordan about Strauss’ behavior. 

    Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, has repeatedly criticized Democrats for trying to impeach the president before the election and described the impeachment inquiry as an “unfair and partisan process.” He has refuted claims that he knew of and ignored Strauss’ abuse when he was at Ohio State University.

    “Congressman Jordan never saw or heard of any kind of sexual abuse, and if he had he would’ve dealt with it,” a spokesperson told the Washington Post on Friday.

    As the lawsuits by former athletes mount, it’s clear that the matter of who knew what during Jordan’s tenure at OSU isn’t going away. 

  • Top NSC Official Says Mick Mulvaney Was Key Player in Trump-Ukraine Quid Pro Quo

    November 8, 2019

    AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

    On Friday afternoon, the House committees conducting the impeachment inquiry released the deposition of Fiona Hill, the former top Russia staffer on the White House National Security Council. The transcript is hundreds of pages long and covers many key areas of the Trump-Ukraine scandal. 

    Our own David Corn has been poring over it and has some instant take-aways. As he notes, Hill’s testimony is significant because it depicts acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney as central to the administration’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s domestic political enemies. Hill testified that Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump’s lawyer, was helping Russian disinformation efforts by spreading the debunked (but Trump-favored) conspiracy theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 US election. She also told lawmakers that Giuliani and his now-indicted business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, mounted a campaign to oust US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to advance their own business interests—and that she suspected Giuliani might have been involved in criminal activity. And Hill described how she has become the target of conspiracy theories that have led to death threats. More from David: 

    Shocking news: