The Fix’s Amber Phillips analyzes where the Democratic and Republican arguments on impeachment stand following the second week of public impeachment hearings.
The White House faces a Sunday deadline to decide whether to participate in a hearing next week by the House Judiciary Committee, the panel that will soon weigh whether to move forward with articles of impeachment against President Trump.
The committee is awaiting a report on Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine that House investigators are pulling together based on public testimony and private depositions. The transcripts of the final two of those depositions were released Tuesday and revealed that two officials at the Office of Management and Budget resigned in part over concerns about the holdup in military assistance to Ukraine.
Democrats are seeking to build a case that Trump leveraged military assistance and an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in exchange for investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and a debunked theory alleging Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
●Two Office of Management and Budget officials resigned in part over concerns about Ukraine aid hold, official testifies.
●The day of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president, minute-by-minute.
●As Trump cases arrive, Supreme Court’s desire to be seen as neutral arbiter will be tested.
●Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Trump’s debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory is worth looking into.
Who’s involved in the impeachment inquiry | Key documents related to the inquiry | What’s next in the inquiry
9:05 AM: Grisham says White House reviewing Nadler letter
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Wednesday that officials are “currently reviewing” a letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) inviting a lawyer for Trump to participate in next week’s hearing.
“[W]hat is obvious to every American is that this letter comes at the end of an illegitimate sham partisan process,” Grisham said in a statement. “The President has done nothing wrong and the Democrats know it.”
By: John Wagner
9:00 AM: Twitter suspends accounts impersonating Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former National Security Council Russia expert Fiona Hill were key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into whether Trump misused his office for personal political gain.
And some Internet users believed they had more to say on Twitter when accounts with handles matching their names popped up in the aftermath of their publicly televised testimony. But the accounts were fakes.
Twitter moved Monday night to suspend the accounts named @FionaHillPhd and @LtColVindman, the social media service confirmed to The Washington Post, but only after they had amassed thousands of followers in the wake of the real witnesses’ blockbuster Capitol Hill testimony. Users were widely retweeting those handles, seemingly under the impression the real Hill and Vindman were writing the missives.
Hill and Vindman don’t actually have Twitter accounts — and their legal teams raced to set the record straight and ensure that Twitter took swift action against the false accounts.
Read more here.
By: Cat Zakrzewski
8:15 AM: Meadows argues that impeachment impedes legislating
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a staunch Trump ally, pushed a Republican argument Wednesday that impeachment is impeding progress on “the things that the American people care about.”
During an appearance on Fox News, Meadows said legislation on transportation was a prime example.
“The next time you hit a pothole, you can say, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. I’ve got a subpoena from the Democrats,’ ” Meadows said.
House Democrats counter that they have passed a slew of legislation that the Republican-led Senate has declined to consider.
By: John Wagner
7:50 AM: Blumenthal says GOP defense of Trump is ‘reprehensible’
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) chided his Republican colleagues Wednesday for continuing to defend Trump and warned that “history will haunt them” if they don’t vote to convict him in a Senate trial.
“They’re continuing to defend the president, and what I find so reprehensible, really, is that they will have to eventually face the facts, and we have a responsibility here that is bigger than any one of us,” Blumenthal said during an interview on CNN. “This is a vote and a process that will be for the history books. History will haunt them, and history would haunt us if we failed to pursue this impeachment proceeding.”
Blumenthal also decried Republicans who have given credence to “crazy conspiracy theories” pushed by Trump about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.
Blumenthal called that “dangerous to our national security” because it gives “additional cover” to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his country’s interference.
By: John Wagner
7:45 AM: RNC chairwoman claims broad support for investigating the Bidens
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel claimed Wednesday that Republican polling data shows wide support for investigating the Bidens.
“Since Democrats are so obsessed with investigations, that’s one the public would actually support!” she said in a morning tweet.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has said his panel will look into Hunter Biden’s service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president. Democrats have called that a distraction from Trump’s conduct.
By: John Wagner
7:40 AM: Top Republican on Judiciary says next week’s hearing is a ‘joke’
Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, argued Wednesday that the panel’s hearing next week will not be fair to Trump.
In a morning tweet, Collins said the committee should hear testimony from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who presided over two weeks of public hearings, rather than from legal scholars.
“For Democrats to claim next week’s hearing gives @realDonaldTrump a chance to defend himself is a joke,” Collins tweeted. “Instead of bringing in Adam Schiff under oath, we are bringing in academics whose minds are already set against POTUS to give their opinion on this sham impeachment.”
By: John Wagner
7:30 AM: White House weighs whether to participate in Judiciary proceedings
The White House is weighing whether to participate in next week’s impeachment hearing by the House Judiciary Committee, which has been billed as “an opportunity to discuss the historical and constitutional basis of impeachment.”
In a letter sent to Trump on Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) gave the White House a deadline of 6 p.m. Sunday to let him know if Trump or a lawyer representing him plans to appear at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
“I write to ask if … you and your counsel plan to attend the hearing or make a request to question the witness panel,” Nadler wrote, adding that he is “committed to ensuring a fair and informative process.”
Nadler’s letter also asks that Trump let him know by Sunday who will act as his lawyer during Judiciary Committee proceedings.
Nadler’s committee is preparing to take the baton from the House Intelligence Committee, which held two weeks of public hearings. That panel, chaired by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), is preparing a report that will help inform the Judiciary Committee as it weighs articles of impeachment against Trump in coming weeks.
In his letter to Trump, Nadler said Wednesday’s hearing will “serve as an opportunity to discuss the historical and constitutional basis of impeachment, as well as the Framers’ intent and understanding of terms like ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ ”
“We will also discuss whether your alleged actions warrant the House’s exercising its authority to adopt articles of impeachment,” he added.
By: John Wagner
7:00 AM: Trump stays in Florida, has no events on public schedule
Following his rally in Sunrise, Fla, on Tuesday night, Trump made the short trip to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he is staying for Thanksgiving.
Trump has no public events on his schedule on Wednesday and has yet to tweet about the impeachment inquiry or any other topics.
By: John Wagner
6:30 AM: Trump tells rally crowd that Democrats are trying to overturn 2016 election
Trump criticized the impeachment inquiry at length during a campaign rally Tuesday night in Sunrise, Fla., telling supporters that Democrats are trying to remove him from office because they are afraid they can’t win at the ballot box in 2020.
“The radical Democrats are trying to overturn the last election because they know that they cannot win the next election,” Trump said, prompting chants of, “Four more years!”
Democrats are “pushing that impeachment witch hunt and a lot of bad things are happening to them,” Trump said, contending without evidence that recent polls have brought bad news for Democrats on impeachment. A poll released Tuesday, conducted for CNN by SSRS showed little change in public sentiment about impeachment, with 50 percent of those surveyed saying they favored Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.
[Trump ‘homecoming’ rally illustrates importance of Florida to his reelection effort]
Trump went into the specifics of the allegations against him, arguing that he never sought a quid pro quo with Ukraine involving military aid or a White House visit.
“I have never had a direct link between investigations and security assistance. … It means we did zero,” Trump said. “We did nothing wrong.”
And he quoted from last week’s testimony by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who told lawmakers that Trump had said in a phone call that he wanted “nothing” from Zelensky and that there was “no quid pro quo.”
Sondland also testified he believed there had been a quid pro quo “with regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting.”
By: Felicia Sonmez
6:00 AM: Trump says he didn’t direct Giuliani to go to Ukraine
In an interview with former Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly, Trump said he didn’t direct his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to go to Ukraine to pressure the country’s leaders to investigate Biden.
The statement marks Trump’s strongest effort yet to distance himself from the actions of his personal lawyer. It also contrasts with the testimony of multiple witnesses who have said during the impeachment hearings that Trump told them to “go talk to Rudy.”
In the interview, which was posted online Tuesday night, O’Reilly asked Trump what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine on his behalf.
“Well, you have to ask that to Rudy, but Rudy — I don’t, I don’t even know,” Trump replied. “I know he was going to go to Ukraine and I think he canceled a trip. But, you know, Rudy has other clients other than me. I’m one person.”
Later in the interview, O’Reilly again asked Trump whether he had asked Giuliani to go to Ukraine.
“Rudy Giuliani, he’s your personal lawyer,” O’Reilly said. “Giuliani’s your personal lawyer. So you didn’t direct him to go to Ukraine to do anything or put any heat on them?”
“No, I didn’t direct him,” Trump replied. “But he’s a warrior. Rudy’s a warrior. Rudy went. He possibly saw something.”
He added that Giuliani has “done work in Ukraine for years.”
“I mean, that’s what I heard,” Trump said. “I might have even read that someplace. But he’s a good man and he’s an honorable guy and he’s a great crime fighter, corruption fighter.”
Giuliani’s name came up several times in Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, according to a rough transcript released by the White House.
Zelensky told Trump that his assistants had spoken with Giuliani and “we are hoping very much” that he would be able to travel to Ukraine.
According to the rough transcript, Trump repeatedly told Zelensky to work with Giuliani and Attorney General William P. Barr.
“Rudy very much knows what’s happening, and he is a very capable guy,” Trump said, according to the transcript.
By: Felicia Sonmez
2019-11-27 14:19:00Z
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