Trump, allies aim to delegitimize impeachment from the start

WASHINGTON — They’re calling it a circus, a farce and even zany.

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spent weeks trivializing the House impeachment inquiry ahead of Tuesday’s historic unveiling of formal charges against the president.


Where Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton treated the prospect of impeachment as a serious threat to their presidencies, Trump’s boosters have tried to brush off the whole thing. Believing that acquittal by the GOP-controlled Senate is all but certain, they’re out to convince voters to punish the president’s Democratic accusers — or at least tune out the Washington spectacle.

To that end, they have belittled the impeachment process with mockery, schoolyard taunts and an unyielding insistence that Trump did not a single thing wrong. They have stonewalled, refusing to allow witnesses to testify; protested by declining to send their own lawyers to hearings; and dished out the ultimate Trumpian insult: calling the proceedings boring.

In the process, the president and his allies have largely glossed over the substance of allegations of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, making light of what is likely to be only the third presidential impeachment in the nation’s history.

It’s a strategy borne of Trump’s instincts and informed by the results of polling and focus groups. The president and his allies believe the effort has been effective, especially when it comes to keeping independent voters skeptical of the process. It is also a reflection of the country’s increasingly polarized political environment.

“Why would we legitimize this process that the American people can’t even follow, aren’t digesting,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday when asked why the White House had chosen not to participate in the House proceedings. She equated cooperation to “colluding with an illegitimate process.”

She showed her disdain for the effort by accusing Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat-New York, of “playing a game of Inspector Clouseau, Secret Squirrel” by waiting so long to unveil the articles of impeachment that were announced Tuesday.

GOP critics have been going all-out to find new ways to mock what Trump has long called a “witch hunt” and a “sham.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, compared the impeachment hearings to “the cantina bar scene in Star Wars. It’s surreal.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed the “zaniness that’s taking place on Capitol Hill.” And Rep. Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee’s top Republican, called the House hearings “a show trial, a planned result of three years of political operations and dirty tricks.”

But even if GOP legislators are more than willing to complain and erect parliamentary roadblocks, many lawmakers, particularly the senators who would serve as jurors in an eventual Senate trial, have been less comfortable defending the president’s conduct.


Nor has that been a priority for White House aides, who have been firing off rapid response emails about procedural unfairness but have done little to engage on the substance of the charges.

During the early days of the inquiry there was tension between the West Wing and the president’s outside allies, who felt the White House was doing too little to defend the president against the charges. Trump himself was initially unwilling to bring on new staff or set up a “war room,” concerned that such a move would suggest he felt vulnerable or make him look guilty.

Ultimately, Trump consented to the hiring of former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and Republican strategist Tony Sayegh, a move that has helped to mollify some outside critics.

There also was a sense of confusion early on, as administration officials and allies struggled to keep up with rapidly unfolding news about Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden. Even some of the president’s closest supporters were unclear about details of his interactions with the president of Ukraine.

With little clarity about what really had happened, Republicans took aim at the process, seeing it as an easy place to start. Once the scope become clearer, officials inside and outside the building began to refine their messaging, based in part on polling and focus group testing.

America First Policies, a nonprofit backing Trump’s policies, for instance, conducted focus groups early in the process that focused specifically on independent voters who might be open to voting for Trump in 2020.

Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman for the group, said the sessions turned up frustration with Congress over endless investigations and not perusing bread-and-butter issues. Many people, she said, felt the impeachment inquiry was highly partisan — a sentiment reflected in polling data — and felt the whole endeavor was a waste of time and money, especially given the quickly-approaching 2020 election.

The group has targeted its advertising to speak to those frustrations, which are also reflected in messaging from the American Action Network, which is tied to House GOP leadership and has spent millions on anti-impeachment ads.

As Republicans have pushed to delegitimize the House impeachment process, they also are professing great reverence for an expected Senate trial on friendlier turf. Trump sees a Senate trial as a forum where his allies will be able to publicly defend him and turn the tables on Democrats in dramatic Court TV fashion.

“It’s pretty clear the president wants a trial,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley. He offered a list of some of the witnesses Trump would like to call, including House intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the whistle blower whose complaint sparked the inquiry, as well as Biden and his son, Hunter, who had dealings in Ukraine.


“The president’s eager to get his story out,” Gidley said.

But Republicans in the Senate caution that Trump may not get the show he wants because Senate rules require a majority of senators to approve individual witnesses, and some are weary of creating a spectacle. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that no decisions have been made yet about the length or structure of a Senate trial.

“The Senate has two choices: It could go down the path of calling witnesses and basically having another trial or it could decide — and again 51 members could make that decision — that they have heard enough,” he said.

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source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

‘Serious misconduct’ by Trump takes center stage at hearing

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee is moving swiftly to weigh findings by fellow lawmakers that President Donald Trump misused the power of his office for personal political gain and then obstructed Congress’ investigation as possible grounds for impeachment.

Responsible for drafting articles of impeachment, the Judiciary Committee prepared Wednesday morning for its first hearing since the release of a 300-page report by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that found “serious misconduct” by the president.


The report did not render a judgment on whether Trump’s actions stemming from a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president rose to the constitutional level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” warranting impeachment. That is for the full House to decide. But its findings involving Trump’s efforts to seek foreign intervention in the American election process provide the basis for a House vote on impeachment and a Senate trial carrying the penalty of removal from office.

“The evidence that we have found is really quite overwhelming that the president used the power of his office to secure political favors and abuse the trust American people put in him and jeopardize our security,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told The Associated Press.

“It was a difficult decision to go down this road because it’s so consequential for the country,” Schiff said. But “the president was the author of his own impeachment inquiry by repeatedly seeking foreign help in his election campaigns.”

Schiff added: “Americans need to understand that this president is putting his personal political interests above theirs. And that it’s endangering the country.”

The session Wednesday with legal scholars will delve into possible impeachable offenses, but the real focus will be on the panel, led by Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat-New York, and made up of a sometimes boisterous, sharply partisan division of lawmakers.

In a 53-page opening statement obtained by the AP, Republican witness Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, will say that the Democrats are bringing a “slipshod impeachment” case against the president based on secondhand information. Still, Turley doesn’t excuse the president’s behavior.

“It is not wrong because President Trump is right,” according to Turley. He calls Trump’s call with Ukraine “anything but ’perfect,” as the president claims. “A case for impeachment could be made, but it cannot be made on this record,” he says.

The remaining three witnesses, all called by Democrats, will argue for impeachment, according to statements obtained by the AP.

Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues, “If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning.”


The political risks are high for all parties as the House presses only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history.

In a statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, “Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump.” She said the report “reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing.”

Trump, attending a NATO meeting in London, called the impeachment effort by Democrats “unpatriotic” and said he wouldn’t be watching Wednesday’s hearing.

The “Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report” provides a detailed, stunning, account of a shadow diplomacy run by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, resulting in layers of allegations that can be distilled into specific acts, like bribery or obstruction, and the more amorphous allegation that Trump abused his power by putting his interests above the nation.

Based on two months of an investigation sparked by a still-anonymous government whistleblower’s complaint, the report relies heavily on testimony from current and former U.S. officials who defied White House orders not to appear.

The inquiry found that Trump “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection,” Schiff wrote in the report’s preface. In doing so, the president “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security,” the report said. When Congress began investigating, it added, Trump obstructed the investigation like no other president in history.

Along with revelations from earlier testimony, the report included previously unreleased cell phone records raising fresh questions about Giuliani’s interactions with the top Republican on the intelligence panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, and the White House. Nunes declined to comment. Schiff said his panel would continue its probe.

Republicans defended the president in a 123-page rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a “favor” — investigations of Democrats and Joe Biden. They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim — and besides, the $400 million was ultimately released, although only after a congressional outcry. Democrats, they argue, just want to undo the 2016 election.

For Republicans falling in line behind Trump, the inquiry is simply a “hoax.” Trump criticized the House for pushing forward with the proceedings while he was overseas, a breach of political decorum that traditionally leaves partisan differences at the water’s edge.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy called on Democrats to end the impeachment “nightmare.” He said, “They’re concerned if they do not impeach this president they can’t beat him in an election.”


Democrats once hoped to sway Republicans to consider Trump’s removal, but they are now facing an ever-hardening partisan split over the swift-moving proceedings that are dividing Congress and the country.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces a critical moment of her leadership as she steers the process ahead after initially resisting the impeachment inquiry, warning it was too divisive for the country and required bipartisan support.

Possible grounds for impeachment are focused on whether Trump abused his office as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations into Trump’s political rivals. At the time, Trump was withholding $400 million in military aid, jeopardizing key support as Ukraine faces an aggressive Russia at its border.

The report also accuses Trump of obstruction, becoming the “first and only” president in U.S. history to “openly and indiscriminately” defy the House’s constitutional authority to conduct the impeachment proceedings by instructing officials not to comply with subpoenas for documents and testimony.

For Democrats marching into what is now a largely partisan process, the political challenge if they proceed is to craft the impeachment articles in a way that will draw the most support from their ranks and not expose Pelosi’s majority to messy divisions, especially as Republicans stand lockstep with the president.

While liberal Democrats are pushing the party to go further and incorporate the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and other actions by Trump, more centrist and moderate Democrats prefer to stick with the Ukraine matter as a simpler narrative that Americans understand.

Democrats could begin drafting articles of impeachment against the president in a matter of days, with a Judiciary Committee vote next week. The full House could vote by Christmas. Then the matter moves to the Senate for a trial in 2020.

The White House declined an invitation to participate Wednesday, with counsel Pat Cipollone denouncing the proceedings as a “baseless and highly partisan inquiry.” Cipollone, who will brief Senate Republicans on Wednesday, left open the question of whether White House officials would participate in additional House hearings.

House rules provide the president and his attorneys the right to cross-examine witnesses and review evidence before the committee, but little ability to bring forward witnesses of their own.

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source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

US Energy chief Perry asked to testify in impeachment probe

WASHINGTON — House investigators have called Energy Secretary Rick Perry to testify in the impeachment inquiry and issued subpoenas late Friday to a top White House lawyer and another administration official to appear.

Perry is the first member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet asked to appear before the House. His testimony is scheduled for Wednesday, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry. The person was unauthorized to discuss it and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes indicated Friday that Perry would not appear for the closed-door hearing but would consider testifying in a public session. Perry has already defied a subpoena from the committees for Ukraine-related documents.

“The Secretary will not partake in a secret star chamber inquisition where agency counsel is forbidden to be present,” Hynes said.

“If the committee is interested in conducting a serious proceeding they are welcome to send for the Secretary’s consideration an invitation to participate in an open hearing where the Department’s counsel can be present and the American people can witness,” she said.

The subpoenas were issued to two White House officials who have already been asked to appear Monday.

One subpoena is for testimony from John Eisenberg, the lead counsel at the National Security Council, according to another person familiar with the situation, who was also unauthorized to discuss it. Eisenberg was instrumental in discussions about how to handle a White House memo recounting the Trump phone call with Ukraine that is central to the impeachment inquiry.

The House impeachment inquiry is turning to Eisenberg as investigators learn more about the concerns other officials at the White House raised with him about the Trump administration’s actions toward Ukraine.

The impeachment inquiry stems from Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he asked for a “favor” — to investigate Democrats and a company linked to the family of Joe Biden — as the White House was withholding military aid to the Eastern European ally as it confronts Russian aggression.

Eisenberg was among the White House lawyers privy to a discussion about moving the memo of Trump’s phone call into a highly restricted computer system normally reserved for documents about covert action. The White House eventually released a rough transcript of the call amid a government whistleblower’s complaint about it.

In testimony behind closed doors this week, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert, told investigators he twice brought his concerns to the NSC’s lead counsel , presumably Eisenberg, about the call and related administration actions toward the country.


Another White House official who testified before the impeachment investigators, Tim Morrison, the Russia expert at NSC, said he, too, contacted the NSC legal office about the call, not because of any concerns it was illegal but because he was worried about how a potential leak to the public would “play out in Washington’s polarized environment.”

The other subpoena is to Brian McCormack, who works on energy policy at the Office of Management and Budget. McCormack is Perry’s former chief of staff.

Trump has blocked White House officials from testifying in the impeachment probe, which he views as illegitimate.

But an ever-growing list of current and former administration staffers has been appearing behind closed doors in the impeachment hearings.

Investigators also want to hear Wednesday from David Hale, an undersecretary at the State Department who has been mentioned in previous testimony.

Mostly, the witnesses are corroborating the core of the investigation: that Trump wanted Zelenskiy for the investigation of Democrats and the company linked to Biden’s son Hunter, while administration withheld military aid.

Democrats see the actions as a quid pro quo, trading government policy and funding for a political favor. Trump said he did nothing wrong.

Perry, who led a U.S. delegation to Ukraine for Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May, has emphatically denied hearing anyone, during his frequent meetings with Ukrainian officials, mention the Bidens or the Ukraine company that employed Hunter Biden.

Perry told the AP in Dubai last weekend that he considered the way lawmakers were pursuing impeachment improper and indicated he did not plan to testify.

The House voted this week to affirm the impeachment process and formalize the procedures ahead.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Democrats move ahead with subpoenas, Trump impeachment

WASHINGTON — House Democrats took their first concrete steps in the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, issuing subpoenas demanding documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduling legal depositions for other State Department officials.

At the end of a stormy week of revelation and recrimination, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi framed the impeachment inquiry as a somber moment for a divided nation.


“This is no cause for any joy,” she said on MSNBC.

At the White House, a senior administration official confirmed Friday a key detail from the unidentified CIA whistleblower who has accused Trump of abusing the power of his office. Trump, for his part, insisted anew that his actions and words have been “perfect” and the whistleblower’s complaint might well be the work of “a partisan operative.”

The White House acknowledged that a record of the Trump phone call that is now at the center of the impeachment inquiry had been sealed away in a highly classified system at the direction of Trump’s National Security Council lawyers.

Separately, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the whistleblower “has protection under the law,” something Trump himself had appeared to question earlier in the day. He suggested then that his accuser “isn’t a whistleblower at all.”

Still at issue is why the rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president was put on “lockdown,” in the words of the whistleblower. The CIA officer said that diverting the record in an unusual way was evidence that “White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired” in the conversation.

The whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump used his office to “solicit interference from a foreign country” to help himself in next year’s U.S. election.

In the phone call, days after ordering a freeze to some military assistance for Ukraine, Trump prodded new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to dig for potentially damaging material on Democratic rival Joe Biden and volunteered the assistance of both his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

Pelosi refused to set a deadline for the probe but promised to act “expeditiously.” The House intelligence committee could draw members back to Washington next week.

Pelosi said she was praying for the president, adding, “I would say to Democrats and Republicans: We have to put country before party.”


At the White House, it was a senior administration official who acknowledged that the rough transcript of Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s Zelenskiy had been moved to a highly classified system maintained by the National Security Council. The official was granted anonymity Friday to discuss sensitive matters.

White House attorneys had been made aware of concerns about Trump’s comments on the call even before the whistleblower sent his allegations to the intelligence community’s inspector general. Those allegations, made in mid-August, were released Thursday under heavy pressure from House Democrats.

One former official said memos of Trump calls with foreign leaders had to be severely restricted after leaks in 2017. Calls with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russia’s Vladimir Putin were among those whose distribution were kept to a minimum.

The official cautioned that administrations discuss sensitive matters with both nations, and that the treatment shouldn’t imply anything untoward on the call. Even some calls with US allies are also restricted due to discussions of classified topics. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the process.

On the Ukraine matter, Trump was keeping up his full-bore attack on the whistleblower and the unnamed “White House officials” cited in the complaint, drawing a warning from Pelosi against retaliation.

Late Thursday, Trump denounced people who might have talked to the whistleblower as “close to a spy” and suggested they engaged in treason, an act punishable by death. Then on Friday, he said the person was “sounding more and more like the so-called Whistleblower isn’t a Whistleblower at all.”

He also alleged without evidence that information in the complaint has been “proved to be so inaccurate.”

Pelosi told MSNBC, “I’m concerned about some of the president’s comments about the whistleblower.”

She said the House panels conducting the impeachment probe will make sure there’s no retaliation against people who provided information in the case. On Thursday, House Democratic chairmen called Trump’s comments “witness intimidation” and suggested efforts by him to interfere with the potential witness could be unlawful.

Trump’s Friday comment questioning the whistleblower’s status seemed to foreshadow a possible effort to argue that legal protection laws don’t apply to the person, opening a new front in the president’s defense, but Conway’s statement seemed to make that less likely.


The intelligence community’s inspector general found the whistleblower’s complaint “credible” despite finding indications of the person’s support for a different political candidate.

Legal experts said that by following proper procedures and filing a complaint with the government rather than disclosing the information to the media, the person is without question regarded as a whistleblower entitled to protections against being fired or criminally prosecuted.

“This person clearly followed the exact path he was supposed to follow,” said Debra D’Agostino, a lawyer who represents whistleblowers. “There is no basis for not calling this person a whistleblower.”

Lawyers say it also doesn’t matter for the purposes of being treated as a whistleblower if all of the allegations are borne out as entirely true, or even if political motives or partisanship did factor into the decision to come forward.

Giuliani, already in the spotlight, was scheduled to appear at a Kremlin-backed conference in Armenia on Tuesday, but he said Friday he would not be attending. The agenda showed him speaking at a session on digital financial technologies. Russian President Vladimir Putin also was scheduled to participate in the conference.

Republicans were straining under the uncertainty of being swept up in the most serious test yet of their alliance with the Trump White House.

“We owe people to take it seriously,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a onetime Trump rival who is now a member of the intelligence committee.

“Right now, I have more questions than answers,” he said. “The complaint raises serious allegations, and we need to determine whether they’re credible or not.”

A swift resolution to the impeachment inquiry may not be easy. The intelligence committee is diving in just as lawmakers leave Washington for a two-week recess, with the panel expected to work while away. One person familiar with the committee’s schedule said that members might return at the end of next week.

Findings will eventually need to be turned over to Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s Judiciary Committee, which is compiling the work of five other panels into what is expected to be articles of impeachment. The panel will need to find consensus.


Meanwhile, Trump’s reelection campaign took to accusing Democrats of trying to “steal” the 2020 election in a new ad airing in a $10 million television and digital buy next week.

The ad also attacks Democrat Biden, highlighting his efforts as vice president to make U.S. aid to Ukraine contingent on that country firing a prosecutor believed to be corrupt. The ad claims that the fired prosecutor was investigating the former vice president’s son.

In fact, the prosecutor had failed to pursue any major anti-corruption investigations, leaving Ukraine’s international donors deeply frustrated. In pressing for the prosecutor’s ouster, Biden was representing the official position of the U.S. government, which was shared by other Western allies and many in Ukraine.

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source: newsinfo.inquirer.net