Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser John Bolton has said he will testify at the president’s Senate impeachment trial should he be subpoenaed to appear, prompting top Democrat Chuck Schumer to warn majority leader Mitch McConnell that preventing Bolton or other witnesses appearing would amount to “participating in a cover-up”.
But McConnell reportedly has votes to set Senate rules for the trial and forge ahead without witnesses.
As tensions with Iran continue to rage, Republican senator Rand Paul has said the president “got bad advice” on his decision to have Quds commander Qassem Soleimani assassinated at Baghdad International Airport on Friday in a US airstrike.
The president told reporters that the administration will debrief members of Congress about its intelligence and what it believes General Soleimani was planning before the presidents' supposedly preemptive attack.
Mr Trump didn't clarify whether he will target Iranian cultural sites following any retaliatory attack, though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared to walk back the administrations' threat.
The president told reporters: "I like to obey the law. But think of it: They kill our people, they blow up our people and then we have to be very gentle with their cultural institutions. But I'm OK with it. It's OK with me. I will say this, if Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences and very strongly."
Trump critic and broadcaster Joe Scarborough has meanwhile written an op-ed for The Washington Post accusing the president of governing according to “a collection of scattered grievances, emotional impulses and random tweets”.
Read live coverage as it happened:
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Chuck Schumer warns Senate against blocking John Bolton testimony
Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser John Bolton has said he will testify at the president’s upcoming Senate impeachment trial should he be subpoenaed to appear, prompting top Democrat Chuck Schumer to warn majority leader Mitch McConnell that preventing Bolton or other witnesses appearing would amount to “participating in a cover-up” (an argument also made by House speaker Nancy Pelosi).
But McConnell is understood to have the votes in place to quash Schumer's request for additional witnesses after potential rebels Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska indicated on Monday evening that would back his suggestion that the trial follow the format used in the Bill Clinton impeachment of 1999.
Collins said on Monday that the Senate should only consider subpoenaing additional witnesses or documents once after the House impeachment investigators and Trump’s defence team have presented their opening arguments, as per 1999.
“The process moved to a period during which the Senate debated and voted that three witnesses should be deposed. I believe that this process - the Clinton approach - worked well,” she said.
“I think we need to do what they did the last time they did this unfortunate process and that was to go through a first phase and then they reassessed after that,” Murkowksi agreed.
“I don’t think there is any decision on Bolton because we don’t have articles,” she added.
Republicans hold 53 seats in the upper chamber and the Democrats 45, plus the support of two independents. That means Schumer needs the support of at least four Republicans to pass any measures altering the format of the next stage of the impeachment process.
Here's Andrew Feinberg's report on Bolton.
What does the Iran crisis mean for Trump’s impeachment?
With Speaker Pelosi yet to pass the articles of impeachment onto the Senate over concerns that McConnell and his cronies have little interest in conducting a fair trial, the other great unknown in all of this is how Iran will respond to the killing of Qassem Soleimani, which threatens to dominate Washington and the news agenda and risk overshadowing Democratic efforts to hold the president to account.
Which, the cynics argue, may be the point of triggering tensions with Tehran in the first place.
Here's an overview of the current state of play.
Rand Paul says Trump 'got bad advice' on airstrike and accuses fellow Republicans of reacting like 'grade-school children'
As tensions with Iran continue to rage, Republican senator Rand Paul has said the president “got bad advice” on his decision to have Iran's top general killed at Baghdad International Airport on Friday in a US airstrike.
Speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, Paul warned that America is now less safe as a result of Trump's order.
"It's now a certainty there will be attacks in revenge for his killing," the Kentuckian said, calling the escalation "the death of diplomacy" with the country and pinning the blame for US sabre-rattling over the last year on Bolton, not the president, despite the former stepping down as national security adviser back in September.
Paul also attacked his fellow GOP members, saying those who felt Soleimani should have been killed because he was "an evil bastard" were reacting like "grade-school children", offering blind allegiance to Trump rather than a measured foreign policy outlook.
White House at odds with Congress over extent of presidential military authority
House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Sunday her chamber will vote on a war powers resolution later this week preventing the president from engaging in further military offensives against Tehran without the prior approval of Congress. A Senate vote is expected to soon follow.
Trump ordering the assassination of Soleimani is being treated in Washington as a brazen test of whether the House and Senate will exert their own authority over US military strategy or cede more war powers to the White House. Congress has shown time and again it is unable to exert its ability to authorise - or halt - the use of military force. Through inaction, lawmakers have begrudgingly allowed the commander-in-chief to all but disregard the seperation of powers clearly dilineated by the Constitution and reinforced by the War Powers Act of 1973.
"I think this president has pushed this to the limit with action that has a huge, escalating effect," says Scott Anderson, a former attorney in the State Department's legal office and former legal adviser for the US embassy in Baghdad. "Maybe this will push Congress to make it a priority. ... Anything short of legislative action doesn't mean anything."
The showdown between the White House and Capitol Hill provides the latest example of how Trump's willingness to break the norms in Washington is setting new standards in governance. Ahead of the attack that killed the general, the president did not consult with congressional leaders. In the aftermath, he refused to make public his justification for the airstrikes. Facing an outcry, Trump scoffed that his tweets should provide adequate updates to Congress, regardless of what is required by law.
Republicans - Rand Paul aside - have largely supported Trump's actions, saying the president was well within his power to take out Iran's architect of proxy operations against Americans in the Middle East. The US considered Soleimani a terrorist.
McConnell said on Monday there's plenty of time for lawmakers to learn more about the president's reasoning for the attack. He complained that Democrats "rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts, rushed to downplay Soleimani's evil while presenting our own president as the villain."
But as Schumer argued on Monday, "It is essential for Congress to put a check on this president."
Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, said both parties in Congress have for years gone along with an expansion of presidential war powers, especially with regard to the conflicts in the Middle East: "In short, our country has - through presidential aggrandisement accompanied by congressional authorisation, delegation, and acquiescence - given one person, the president, a sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war... That is our system: One person decides."
Past presidents at least signaled a nod to the legislative branch, which has the sole power under the Constitution to declare war, knowing they would need to ask Congress to pay for military operations. It's one way the founders sought to keep the executive in check.
But Congress has allowed its role to erode since the passage of Authorisation for Use of Military Force (AUMF) in 2001 to fight terrorism after the 9/11 attacks and passage of another AUMF for the invasion of Iraq in 2002.
The fallout from those votes has deeply divided Congress and the nation, with many lawmakers, particularly Democrats, now saying they were mistakes. Yet lawmakers have been paralyzed on the question of whether to repeal or change those authorities.
Only after US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed last summer in a gruesome murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey did Congress muster the resolve to slap restrictions on American involvement with the Saudi-led war in Yemen. It was a rare exertion of authority from Congress, the first since the passage of the War Powers Act of 1973. And Trump promptly vetoed it.
"There's no question the president has gotten stronger over time, the Congress less strong," said Wendy Sherman, a former undersecretary of state in the Obama administration and chief negotiator of the Iran nuclear deal. This is a president who we know makes decisions by impulse and without any deliberative process," said Sherman, who now directs the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School. "Ceding all this power to an impulsive president... puts our national security at risk."
'It should be scary to people what this president is doing'
California Democrat Ro Khanna appeared on MSNBC yesterday to tell Hallie Jackson that Trump has compromised national security by pursuing military ends against Iran without consulting Congress first and says the president's Twitter threat to target 52 Iranian cultural sites is a violation of the 1954 Hague Convention on cultural property.
Khanna said any further action against Tehran by the president that is not sanctioned by Congress would represent a "potentially impeachable offence", which would be "on the table" as a possible additional article of impeachment for the House to vote on.
Here's a little more on whether that Trump threat constitutes a war crime.
Trump cheers Australia after offering wildfire support
The president's first tweet of the day is a response to fellow foolhardy climate change denier Scott Morrison of Australia, following up on a call he made yesterday to the PM offering American support in tackling the deadly wildfires decimating the landscape.
He's now back to his busy schedule of retweeting Republican impeachment messaging from senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham (11 and counting from the latter) and congressman Mark Meadows.
Administration drafting Iraq sanctions in case US troops expelled
The Trump administration has reportedly begun drafting sanctions against Iraq, intended to be enforced in the event that American troops are expelled from the region.
"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump told reporters in DC yesterday.
Senior Pentagon leaders have so far said the US has no plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, despite a draft letter from a senior military officer that appeared to suggest such plans were under way. The denial comes as Baghdad urged the UN Security Council to condemn the airstrike that killed Iran's top military commander as a "flagrant violation" of the terms of the American forces' presence in the country.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the US is "moving forces around" Iraq and neighbouring Kuwait. He said a draft letter circulated internally by a US Marine commander was a "poorly written" honest mistake that should never have got out.
The draft letter appeared to suggest the US was preparing to pull troops out of the country in response to a vote by the Iraqi parliament over the weekend. The draft said troops would be "repositioning over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement", and warned of an increase in helicopter travel around the Green Zone in Baghdad. It added: "We respect your sovereignty decision to order our departure."
(Statista)
Gen Milley and defence secretary Mark Esper said the US has been repositioning troops, largely due to increased security threats from Iran. The letter was meant to co-ordinate with the Iraqi military on an increase in US helicopter and troop movements as they shift positions around the country. "There's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq," Esper said. "There's no decision to leave, nor did we issue any plans to leave or prepare to leave."
Gen Milley acknowledged that some language in the letter "implies withdrawal" but that "is not what is happening".
"The long and the short of it is, it's an honest mistake," he said, adding that he had just got off the phone with the US commander in the Middle East, who explained the effort.
Iraq's UN ambassador Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom issued a letter to the security council on Monday, calling the airstrike "a dangerous escalation that might ignite a devastating war in Iraq, the region and the world". He also urged the council to hold accountable "those who have committed such violations".
Esper said the US remains committed to the campaign to defeat Isis in Iraq and the wider region. Any Security Council action sought by Iraq against the Trump administration, however, is virtually certain to be vetoed by the US.
Defence secretary's chief of staff to step down
Speaking of Esper, not only has he been accused of personally profiteering from any war with Iran...
...he's also just lost his chief of staff.
Eric Chewning has chosen this week of all weeks to announce his resignation, saying he's leaving the Pentagon to pursue interests in the private sector.
He will be replaced by Jen Stewart, the top Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee and a former adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, according to a statement from Pentagon spokeswoman Alyssa Farah.
"I’m grateful for Eric's professionalism, judgment, and leadership over the last seven months as I moved into the Secretary of Defense role," Esper said in a statement Monday. "In an incredibly demanding job, Eric has been a source of calm and tireless work. We wish him all the best upon his return to the private sector."
According to Just Security, Chewning's name crops up frequently in unredacted emails the site obtained revealing the extent of concerns among Pentagon officials about the legality of the White House's decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine (a call that, of course, ultimately led to Trump's impeachment).
Elizabeth Warren: Trump embodies the corruption he campaigned against
Elizabeth Warren appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show last night and argued that Trump embodies precisely the sort of corruption he campaigned on a platform to eradicate from Washington in 2016 when he pledged to "drain the swamp".
Yesterday, Warren won the backing of Texas Democrat Julian Castro, days after he abandoned his own campaign after failing to whip up sufficient popular support.
Republican Paul Gosar posts fake photo of Obama shaking hands with Hassan Rouhani
A Republican congressman has shared a doctored photo of Barack Obama supposedly shaking hands with Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani in an attempt to criticise the 44th president of the United States.
Paul Gosar, member of Congress for Arizona, tweeted the fake photo with the caption “The world is a better place without these guys in power” in a series of posts about the killing of General Soleimani.
He still hasn't taken it down.
Here's Conrad Duncan's report.
Comedian under fire for joking about claiming $80m Iranian bounty on Trump's head
Mexican-American stand-up comic George Lopez is under pressure after responding to an Instagram post about a supposed $80m (£61m) Iranian bounty on Trump's head with the words: "We'll do it for half."
Some right-wing Twitter users were so incensed by the joke they began tweeting about it using the hashtag #ArrestGeorgeLopez, with the likes of Trump goon Terrence K Williams even tagging the Secret Service into their outraged posts.
Here's Adam White with more.
Trump administration calls for death penalty for MS-13 gang members accused of murder
The Justice Department plans to pursue the death penalty for a member of the MS-13 gang accused in the kidnappings and killings of two Virginia teenagers in 2016, a move that comes as the Trump administration fights to restart federal executions.
The Justice Department plans to pursue the death penalty for a member of the MS-13 gang accused in the kidnappings and killings of two Virginia teenagers in 2016, a move that comes as the Trump administration fights to restart federal executions.
House minority leader says Adam Schiff to blame for Trump inflaming Iran crisis
In the last hour, Trump has been pushing House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's interview on Fox and Friends...
...during which he spouted this total nonsense:
President to reward Democratic defector Jeff Van Drew with campaign stop
Trump will hold a campaign stop in deep-blue New Jersey later this month to reward congressman Jeff Van Drew for switching parties and voting against his impeachment.
The president will travel to Wildwood, New Jersey, in Van Drew's district on 28 January to hold a rally, his campaign announced.
Trump endorsed the Democrat-turned-Republican during an Oval Office meeting on 19 December, when Van Drew formally announced he was leaving the Democratic Party after providing Trump with a symbolic victory in the prior day's impeachment vote. Van Drew bucked Democrats to join a united Republican Party in opposing impeachment.
Van Drew said at the time that he believed the GOP was a "better fit" and promised Trump his "undying support." Trump promised to return the favour and announced that he was endorsing Van Drew for re-election and labeled him "a tremendous asset for the party."
Van Drew had been facing an uphill Democratic primary battle, including a challenge from Brigid Harrison, a Montclair State University political science professor who had secured the backing of top local Democrats, including the New Jersey Senate president.
Amy Kennedy, the wife of former Rhode Island Democratic congressman Patrick Kennedy, entered the Democratic race on Monday.
Here's Alex Woodward's report on Van Drew's original manoeuvre last month.
Four Americans in 10 approve of Soleimani airstrike, survey finds
Just 43 per cent of Americans approve of Trump's decision to order the killing of Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani, according to a new poll by HuffPost-YouGov.
Three-eight per cent of respondents to the survey said they disapproved of the call, with 19 per cent undecided.
You will recall that the president said last week he took action "to stop a war", not start one...
...I wonder how that's turning out?
'A collection of scattered grievances, emotional impulses and random tweets'
TV anchor and regular Trump foe Joe Scarborough has taken to the opinion pages of The Washington Post today to compare the president and his latest endeavour (unfavourably) to General Douglas MacArthur and the audacious Inchon landing of September 1950 at the start of the Korean War.
"His performance as commander in chief has been shaped by a collection of scattered grievances, emotional impulses and random tweets," writes Morning Joe.
But the president isn't the only one being accused of confusion over Iran.
Minnesota senator and Democratic 2020 contender Amy Klobuchar has also been caught out in a false claim about Tehran.
Fox runs poll identifying Trump as greatest threat to world peace
The president can't have seen this little episode, otherwise he might have taken his favourite broadcaster to task instead of praising them as he did earlier today.
Here's Greg Evans to explain a fresh new embarrassment.
Mike Pompeo: 'On our watch, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon'
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo has just completed a press conference at the State Department where he was quizzed about the precise nature of the intelligence that led America to take out General Soleimani.
He was largely vague, pleased with himself when he got a darkly ironic laugh from the assembled press when he asked whether they seriously believed the late Quds commander had been in Iraq to talk peace and stability.
But Pompeo did say this:
He also told reporter Andrea Mitchell that the US would obey international law when it came to bombing Iranian cultural sites, contrary to the president's Twitter threat.
Trump allies struggle to explain Iran rationale on Fox
Like Pompeo, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham similarly struggled to explain the precise nature of the threat posed by Soleimani over on Fox.
On the same channel, Trump's former UN ambassador Nikki Haley claimed only the 2020 Democrats were "mourning the loss" of the commander, declining to refer who she was talking about.
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