As the Senate prepares to hold its third presidential impeachment trial in US history, the defence team for Donald Trump was revealed to include Ken Starr, Robert Ray, Alan Dershowitz and Pam Bondi.
Mr Starr led the investigation into Bill Clinton in the late 1990s while Dershowitz has defended such controversial public figures as OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
During the Clinton impeachment, then-private citizen Trump called Mr Starr a "freak" and a "lunatic" in his pursuit of impeaching then-president Clinton, who Mr Trump supported at the time.
As the Senate swore in chief justice John Roberts on Thursday to preside over the trial, Mr Trump responded angrily from the Oval Office, declaring he had been impeached for “absolutely no reason”.
The president has also continued to deny knowing Lev Parnas, the business associate of his attorney Rudy Giuliani who is the latest to come forward with evidence against him, placing renewed pressure on the likes of Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and ex-Energy Secretary Rick Perry to reveal what they know about the Kiev plot.
But the president enjoyed a sympathetic Republican audience as he celebrated college football champions from LSU on Friday, when he joked about his impeachment while citing a strong economy and well-funded military before flying to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend.
He told the team: "They're trying t impeach the son of a b****. Can you believe that? We got the greatest economy we ever had ... We got the greatest military. We rebuilt it. We took out those terrorists like your football team would've taken out those terrorists, right?"
Follow live coverage as it happened:
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Trump rages as Senate impeachment trial commences
As the Senate swore in chief justice John Roberts on Thursday to preside over only the third presidential impeachment trial in American history, Donald Trump responded angrily from the Oval Office, declaring he had been impeached for “absolutely no reason”.
“It’s a complete hoax. The whole thing with Ukraine. So you have a perfect phone call – it was actually two phone calls, you people don’t report that. They were both perfect calls. In fact probably among the nicest calls I’ve ever made to foreign leaders,” Trump insisted, referring to his attempts to extort a domestic political favour from the Eastern European country’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky last July.
Trump was speaking from behind the Resolute Desk with a face like thunder at an event to announce his new guidance on constitutional prayer in public schools (a further overture to the Christian right by bolstering religious freedoms at the expense of secular interests) but his mind was clearly on the pomp and ceremony underway in the upper chamber of Congress across Capitol Hill, as this subsequent all-caps tweet makes clear:
Here's Clark Mindock with a full report on the day's events.
President, Mike Pence again deny knowing Lev Parnas
The president also used his Q&A with White House reporters to continue to deny knowing Lev Parnas, the business associate of his attorney Rudy Giuliani who is the latest to come forward with evidence against him, placing renewed pressure on the likes of vice president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and ex-energy secretary Rick Perry to reveal what they know about the Kiev plot.
"I don't even know who this man is, other than I guess he attended fundraisers so I take a picture with him," he said. "I take thousands and thousand of pictures with people all the time. Thousands during the course of a year."
"I don't know him at all. Don't know what he's about. Don't know where he comes from. Know nothing about him. I can only tell you this thing is a big hoax... Perhaps he's a fine man, perhaps he's not."
Pence said the same thing on a campaign stop in Tampa, Florida, declaring: “I don’t know the guy.”
The veep also said that Parnas's insistence that he had known about the plot to pressure Zelensky into announcing an anti-corruption investigation into Joe Biden was "completely false".
Parnas told MSNBC journalist Rachel Maddow in an interview broadcast on Wednesday night that Pence had pulled out of attending Zelensky's inauguration in Kiev last May a day after the Giuliani crony had appealed to the the Ukrainian president on Trump's behalf.
The trouble with such denials is that Parnas has a selfie with almost everyone in the Trump administration - and his lawyer Joseph Bondy is not afraid to share them.
Parnas says Trump World 'like a cult', admits fear of Justice Department as pressure grows on Mike Pompeo
There were further Lev Parnas revelations last night as both Maddow and Anderson Cooper on CNN ran more of their interviews with the Giuliani associate, who, you will recall, was arrested for campaign finance violations with his business partner Igor Fruman last October.
He told Maddow that Rick Perry had been in the know about the Ukraine plot the all the way and that he personally believed Biden had done nothing wrong:
Speaking of his involvement in Trump World more generally, Parnas told MSNBC: "It was like being in a cult. When they say organised crime - I don’t think Trump is like organised crime, I think he’s like a cult leader.
"Right now the scary part… and what people don’t understand, is there’s a lot of Republicans that would go against him. The difference between why Trump is so powerful now - he wasn’t as powerful in ‘16 and ‘17, he became that powerful when he got [attorney general] William Barr.
"People are scared. Am I scared? Yes. I think I’m more scared of our Justice Department than these criminals right now. Because the scariest part is getting locked in some room and being treated as an animal when you’ve done nothing wrong. And that’s the tool they’re using. Because they’re trying to scare me into not talking… My wife is scared, my kids are nervous."
Talking to Cooper, Parnas said that, during a conversation at Trump's Washington hotel early last year, he had told the the president that the former US ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch had been telling others that she believed Trump would be impeached, causing the president to react angrily.
"In the conversation, the subject of Ukraine was brought up. And I told the president that our opinion that [Yovanovitch] is badmouthing him, and that she said that he's gonna get impeached, something like that. I don't know if that's word for word," Parnas said.
"His reaction was, he looked at me, like, got very angry, and basically turned around to [former White House aide] John DeStefano, and said, 'Fire her. Get rid of her.'"
These latest damning insights come after Parnas's text messages and notes, handed over to House Democrats earlier this week, indictated Yovanovitch had been placed under surveilance by Giuliani's team, prompting the former envoy to demand an investigation be carried out and Ukraine to oblige.
All of which means her former boss at the State Department, Mike Pompeo, has an awful lot of questions to answer.
Here's Andy Gregory's report.
Eleven US troops injured in Iran missile attack despite Pentagon claim of no casualties
US military news site Defense One reported overnight that, contrary to Trump administration claims to the contrary, 11 American soldiers were injured in the Iranian missile strike on the al-Asad air base in Iraq on 8 January, as Tehran retaliated against the killing of its top general Qassem Soleimani in an American drone strike on Baghdad International Airport five days earlier.
With the world on the bring of war one week into the new year, Trump memorably tweeted "All is well!" and claimed it was a case of "So far, so good!" on the casualty front...
...this was later backed up by secretary of defence Mark Esper and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley, who said there had been "no friendly casualties" in the attacks.
But, according to Defense One, 11 were hurt and evacuated to military hospitals in Kuwait and Landstuhl, Germany, to be treated "for traumatic brain injury and to undergo further evaluation" this week.
A statement issued yesterday by spokesman Colonel Myles Caggins of US military command in Baghdad read: “As previously stated, while no US service members were killed in the 8 January Iranian attack on al-Asad air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed.
“Out of an abundance of caution, some service members were transported from al-Asad Air Base, Iraq, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening.
"When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual’s medical status."
Another defence official told the site: "As a standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury, and if deemed appropriate, are transported to a higher level of care. At this time, eight individuals have been transported to Landstuhl, and three have been transported to Camp Arifjan,” said the official.
Had the casualties been revealed last week, Trump would surely have found it much harder to justify de-escalating a conflict he had so recklessly started.
Here's Kate Ng's report.
FBI investigators raid Robert Hyde's home and office
The Feds visited the home and offices of Connecticut congressional candidate and Trump donor Robert Hyde yesterday after the Parnas communications revealed his murky involvement in the effort to spy on Marie Yovanovitch.
Agents were seen at Hyde's home in Weatogue, Connecticut, early on Thursday morning before going to his business in nearby Avon. Hyde runs both his landscaping company and his campaign headquarters from that office.
Parnas told Maddow Hyde was "drunk all the time" and did not pose a threat to the ambassador, characterising him as a MAGA fantasist known for his erratic behaviour (apparently once suffering a psychotic episode at Trump's Miami Doral resort).
Like Parnas, Hyde has posed for innumerable selfies with everybody's who's anybody in Trumplandia and clearly has connections, despite the likes of Eric Trump and Kellyanne Conway seeking to distance themselves from him this week.
'Teacher of the year' knelt during national anthem at college football playoff to protest Trump
The president attended the 2020 college football championship game in New Orleans between Louisana State University (LSU) and Clemson University on Monday night, where he received a warm reception from the crowd at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and met Hollywood actor Vince Vaughn (opposition to which Fox cooked up into a ludicrous and unfounded "liberal outrage" furore).
One person also there who was much less pleased to see him was Minnesota educator Kelly Holstine, recently named "teacher of the year", who knelt like Colin Kaepernick during the national anthem in protest at Trump and in support of the oppressed. Holstine has also rejected an invitation to the White House for an Oval Office ceremony to receive her honour from education secretary Betsy DeVos.
Here's Alex Woodward's story on an overlooked gesture, as Trump prepares host the victorious LSU Tigers at the White House today.
'I've spoken to women who were destroyed by Trump. The Marie Yovanovitch rumors don't surprise me'
For Indy Voices, Molly Jong-Fast says the Lev Parnas message dump exposes a pattern of behaviour routinely enacted by the Trump administration when it needs to bring down unruly women in power.
For Indy Voices, Molly Jong-Fast says the Lev Parnas message dump exposes a pattern of behaviour routinely enacted by the Trump administration when it needs to bring down unruly women in power.
'The trade deals Trump made this week should have sealed the deal for him in 2020. But they won't'
Also for Voices, Jay Caruso argues that the president's latest round of dealmaking should have been a major win for him in spite of his impeachment but reminds us that no one knows better how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory better than The Donald.
Chuck Schumer to force vote on new impeachment witnesses when Senate trial reconvenes on Tuesday
Now that Nancy Pelosi has chosen her seven impeachment managers and they have delivered the articles to the Senate, the trial stage of Trump's impeachment is officially underway.
So what happens next?
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday he intends to force a vote on hearing new witnesses when Congress returns from a three-day weekend on Tuesday. The current plan takes that thorny question into consideration only after the House managers and Trump's legal defence team have presented their competing cases.
"We expect that we will have votes on these witnesses on Tuesday but can't be sure until we see the resolution that McConnell has put together," he said, laying into his arch-enemy Mitch McConnell for not sharing the text of the trial's procedures with the opposition.
"It's amazing that at this moment we still haven't seen it," he said.
The witnesses the Democrats are believed to want to hear from are: ex-national security adviser John Bolton, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, his aide Robert Blair and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey.
For their part, the conspiracy-minded Republicans backing Trump have their eyes on Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and the CIA whistleblower, whose identity has (just about) been kept secret so far.
Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal yesterday made a passionate case for fresh witnesses in light of the Lev Parnas revelations and the US Government Accountability Office's ruling yesterday that the administration's decision to withhold congressionally-approved military aid from Ukraine was illegal.
Here's Andrew Feinberg's explainer on what we're in for here.
Republican senator 'likely' to defect on witnesses, rated least popular in new poll
Maine Republican senator Susan Collins said yesterday she is "likely" to support Schumer on impeachment witnesses.
"While I need to hear the case argued and the questions answered, I tend to believe having additional information would be helpful. It is likely that I would support a motion to call witnesses at that point in the trial just as I did in 1999," she said in a statement, alluding to the Bill Clinton impeachment trial.
Her comments on the matter at the time (newly resurfaced online) make any question that she might not support that effort now utterly absurd:
She is seen as one of four members of the GOP most likely to defy the party on the issue and hand the 47-strong Democrats with the magic 51 they need to force the issue, the others being Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
It's not helping Collins's popularity though, with a Morning Consult poll for the quarter ranking her the least popular Republican senator, ahead even of McConnell, entering a year in which she faces a re-election battle with a whopping 52 per cent disapproval rating.
Iran's supreme leader calls Trump a 'clown' in first Friday sermon for eight years
Iran's supreme leader lashed out at Western countries as he led Friday prayers in Tehran for the first time in eight years today, dismissing "American clowns" who he said pretend to support the Iranian nation but want to stick their "poisoned dagger" into its back.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used his rare appearance at the weekly prayers to deliver a fiery address in which he insisted Iran would not bow to US pressure after months of crushing sanctions and a series of recent crises - from the killing of a top Iranian general to the accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane.
Khamenei said the mass funerals for Qassem Soleimani show that the Iranian people support the Islamic Republic despite its recent trials. He said the "cowardly" hit on Soleimani had taken out the most effective commander in the battle against the Islamic State group.
In response to Soleimani's killing, Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting US troops in Iraq, causing only minor injuries. Khamenei said the strike had dealt a "blow to America's image" as a superpower. In the part of his sermon delivered in Arabic, he said the "real punishment" would be in forcing the US to withdraw from the Middle East.
After the missile strike, as Iran's Revolutionary Guard braced for an American counterattack that never came, it mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian jetliner shortly after takeoff from Tehran's international airport, killing all 176 passengers on board, mostly Iranians.
Authorities concealed their role in the tragedy for three days, initially blaming the crash on a technical problem. When it came, their admission of responsibility triggered days of street protests, which security forces dispersed with live ammunition and tear gas.
Khamenei called the shootdown of the plane a "bitter accident" that he said had saddened Iran as much as it made its enemies happy. He said Iran's enemies had seized on the crash to question the Islamic Republic, the Revolutionary Guard and the armed forces.
Ukraine's foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko said on Friday that his country wants Iran to issue a formal document admitting its guilt. Ukraine, Canada and other nations whose citizens died in the crash have demanded Iran pay compensation to the victims' families.
Khamenei also lashed out at Britain, France and Germany after they triggered a dispute mechanism to try and bring Iran back into compliance with the unraveling 2015 nuclear agreement. Iran began openly breaching certain limits under the agreement last summer, more than a year after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and began imposing sanctions. After the killing of Soleimani, Iran said it was no longer bound by the nuclear deal.
"These contemptible governments are waiting to bring the Iranian nation to its knees," Khamenei said. "America, who is your elder, your leader and your master, was not able to bring the Iranian nation to its knees. You are too small to bring the Iranian nation to its knees."
Khamenei has held the country's top office since 1989 and has the final say on all major decisions. The 80-year-old leader openly wept at the funeral of Soleimani and vowed "harsh retaliation" against the United States.
Thousands of people attended the Friday prayers, occasionally interrupting his speech by chanting "God is greatest!" and "Death to America!"
Tensions between Iran and the United States have steadily escalated since Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord, which had imposed restrictions on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
The US has since imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, including its vital oil and gas industry, pushing the country into an economic crisis that has ignited several waves of sporadic, leaderless protests. Trump has openly encouraged the protesters - even tweeting in Farsi - hoping that the protests and the sanctions will bring about fundamental change in a longtime adversary.
Khamenei mocked those efforts, dismissing "these American clowns who falsely and despicably say that they are standing with the Iranian people." He did not refer to Trump by name, but was clearly referring to him and his administration.
"You are lying," he said. "If you do stand with the Iranian people it is because you want to stick your poisoned dagger into the back of the Iranian nation. Of course you haven't been able to do that so far, and you won't be able to do a damn thing."
Khamenei was always sceptical of the nuclear agreement, arguing that the United States could not be trusted. But he allowed president Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, to conclude the agreement with Barack Obama. Since Trump's withdrawal, he has repeatedly said there can be no negotiations with the United States.
Khamenei last delivered a Friday sermon in February 2012, when he called Israel a "cancerous tumor" and vowed to support anyone confronting it. He also warned against any US strikes on Iran over its nuclear programme, saying the US would be damaged "10 times over."
Here's Borzou Daragahi's report.
Supporters fear Sanders and Warren spat could damage chances of left-winger winning Democratic nomination
Here's the latest on the damaging feud between 2020 presidential challengers Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren after the audio from their post-debate confrontation emerged yesterday and saw the latter attacking the former for accusing her of lying live on national TV.
Joe Biden secures key endorsement, considers Beto O'Rouke, Julian Castro as potential running mates
Speaking of the 2020 Democratic race, Joe Biden has won the endorsement of Alabama congresswoman Terri Sewell, receiving his 11th from a black member of Congress in time for the Martin Luther King Jr Day weekend
“There’s no bigger threat to the civil rights and voting rights that are so important to my district than Donald Trump,” Sewell told Politico. Her district includes parts of Birmingham, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa and all of Selma.
“Coupled with [Biden’s] vast experience is also his ability to cross the aisle to unite folks, and I think that that makes him the best candidate, in my opinion, to take on and beat Donald Trump in November.”
Alabama goes to the poll on Super Tuesday: 3 March.
“I look forward to telling Southern voters that are really important to Super Tuesday why it is I believe that Joe is the best candidate to move the nation forward and to really beat Donald Trump and protect the legacy that is Martin Luther King, fighting for justice and equality for all,” Sewell said.
The question of who Biden's running mate might be should he win the nomination has been floated in recent days, with the frontrunner himself hinting that fallen rivals Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro could be under consideration, telling The Dallas Morning News that both Texans are "talented, talented people".
Having said that, he seems to be telling regional papers whatever they want to hear on the subject. The Sacramento Bee heard from him this week that he would also consider California senator Kamala Harris for “anything that she would be interested in”.
Diamond and Silk liken Trump's impeachment to treatment of African Americans under slavery
Two of Trump's most crazed supporters have been on Fox and Friends this morning and absolutely outdoing themselves.
Trump says, without irony, Michael Bloomberg's entry into 2020 race is 'a vanity project'
The president himself has been busy on Twitter in the last hour, treating his followers to retweets from GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Mike Pence and Sean Hannity, extensively quoting Laura Ingraham and attacking 2020 challenger Michael Bloomberg by saying his adverts are "purposely wrong" and that it was "a vanity project for him to get into the game".
Coming from Donald John Trump, that is mighty rich indeed.
This just reads like bullying (quick, somebody tell Melania!).
This attack on the Government Accountability Office via possible trial lawyer and Jeffrey Epstein pal Alan Derschowitz is especially weak, not to say deranged.
And, oddly, some of his retweets are really old - the one below in particular and a couple looking back to his rally in Cincinnati last August.
Trump says he does not know Lev Parnas 13 times in two minutes
The president did not sound particularly innocent or convincing yesterday when he repeatedly denied knowing the man he has been pictured with on numerous occasions (as the example amply demonstrates).
Andy Gregory has been keeping score of the denial count.
Mike Pence pens Wall Street Journal op-ed calling on Democrats to acquit Trump
In the same week the vice president was dragged further into the festering mire that is the Ukraine scandal by Lev Parnas, Mike Pence has had the audacity to pen an an op-ed in the pages of The Wall Street Journal calling on Senate Democrats to acquit the president.
He compares the Trump impeachment to that of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and calls on modern Dems to follow the example of senator Edmond G Ross who "stayed true to his convictions, opposed the passions of his own party, and voted to acquit Johnson. He faced social ostracism and physical assault. Still, he knew he was right."
Will they listen to the veep? Well, would you?
Here's Chris Riotta on Pence.
Trump camp names impeachment defence team
We're hearing that the president's legal team for the impeachment trial will be: Clinton prosecutors Ken Starr and Robert Ray, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Jay Sekulow, the aforementioned Alan Dershowitz (an ex-defender of OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein), Mike Purpura, Pat Philbin, Jane Raskin and ex-Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.
More on this imminently but, for now, here's a handy intro.
Aaaaaaaand here's our breaking story.
Monica Lewinsky: 'Are you f***ing kidding me?'
The one-time White House intern at the centre of the last American impeachment trial has already reacted to the news of Starr's addition to Team Trump and it's a beauty.
