Donald Trump continues to froth over the impeachment inquiry on Twitter as Laura Cooper, deputy assistant US secretary of defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, becomes the latest senior official to appear before the House panel on Capitol Hill to testify about the conduct of diplomatic relations with Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, told the inquiry he was informed military aid to the country was “dependent” on president Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to publicly announce a corruption probe into Donald Trump’s 2020 rival Joe Biden, confirming the existence of the suspected quid pro quo at the heart of the Democratic-led investigation.
Mr Biden’s polling lead in the Democratic 2020 primary race is meanwhile at its widest margin since April. The former vice president has won the support of 34 per cent of voters registered with the party, according to a new CNN survey.
There as quite a scuffle in Washington on Wednesday, however, after Republicans staged a sit in during a secured briefing as a part of the impeachment inquiry.
During that time, the Republicans reportedly ordered pizza and joked about as they successfully pulled off their publicity stunt.
Mr Trump also announced that he would be pulling back on Turkish sanctions, claiming that the cease fire his administration claims existed between Kurds and the Turkish military had succeeded.
He later claimed that the US was building a wall in Colorado, during a speech in Pittsburgh, even though the state is landlocked.
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Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, told the House impeachment inquiry on Tuesday he was informed the delivery of almost $400mn (£309mn) in military aid to the country was “dependent” on president Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to publicly announce a corruption probe into Donald Trump’s 2020 rival Joe Biden, confirming the existence of the suspected quid pro quo at the heart of the Democratic-led investigation.
Taylor had become a person of interest to the inquiry when US special envoy Kurt Volker released text messages between the two of them and US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, in which Taylor was seen writing to Sondland on 9 September and saying:
I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.
Speaking behind closed doors on Tuesday, Taylor said that after his appointment as ambassador in May - replacing the ousted Marie Yovanovitch - he had become alarmed by the existence of a secondary, “highly irregular” diplomatic channel and attested that other US officials had said they were busy working to convince Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, then on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, was guiding the plan, Taylor claimed.
His quid pro quo contention arose from a conversation with Sondland, he explained in his opening statement:
During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognised that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukranian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations.
In fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.
Taylor went on to say he felt he had been kept in the dark about what was really going on between the two countries and described the State Department, the Defence Department, the CIA and national security adviser John Bolton scrambling to stop the withholding of the much-needed aid at a time when Ukrainian soldiers were fighting Russian-back forces to the north and lost 13,000 men.
He also offered this damning quote from Sondland on the administration's thinking:
President Trump is a businessman... When a businessman is about to sign a cheque to someone who owes him something, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the cheque.
“It was just the most damning testimony I’ve heard,” Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told The Washington Post afterwards, while her Democratic colleagues Carolyn Maloney and Dean Phillips both used the word "disturbing".
Here's Clark Mindock's full report.
President Trump attempted to distract from Taylor's deposition by describing the inquiry as “a lynching” on Twitter yesterday.
While the remark brought incredulity and angry condemnation from across the political spectrum (exactly the reaction he intended to provoke), there were some craven attempts to defend him by his own side.
One of his apologists, senator Lindsey Graham, has now announced he is planning to table a resolution in the Republican-held upper chamber condemning the House’s activities.
"This resolution puts the Senate on record condemning the House... Here's the point of the resolution: Any impeachment vote based on this process, to me, is illegitimate, is unconstitutional, and should be dismissed in the Senate without a trial," Graham told Fox News's Sean Hannity last night.
At this juncture, it's hard to disagree with Barack Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice on Graham:
Here's Chris Riotta on the president's latest assault on human decency.
Trump was up late on Twitter last and angrily lashed out at reports suggesting he is plotting to replace his blundering acting chief of staffMick Mulvaney with either senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway or treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin.
He also retweeted a Winston Churchill quote from Piers Morgan (urgh, too early to think about him) and praise for ex-press secretary Sean Spicer's perfomances on Dancing with the Stars from Mulvaney's predecessor, Reince Priebus.
Meanwhile, it seems Trump's frustration with Mulvaney goes back further than his disastrous quid pro quo press conference last week...
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made an interesting break with Trump yesterday, refuting the president's claim that he had been reassured by McConnell that the rough transcript of his now-notorious phone call with President Zelensky of 25 July was perfectly fine.
(Michael Reynolds/EPA)
Trump had told reporters on 3 October:
He put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he's read, and I spoke to him about it too. He read my phone call with the president of Ukraine. Mitch McConnell - he said, 'That was the most innocent phone call that I've read.' I mean, give me a break.
Not true, according to the Kentucky senator yesterday:
We’ve not had any conversations on that subject.
McConnell has said that the idea the transcript contains an impeachable offence is "laughable" and complained that the inquiry is a Democratic ploy to hold up the ratification of the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement but this was significant: the Republican knew his words would embarrass the president.
The Trump administration's special envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he was not consulted on the president's decision to withdraw 1,000 US troops from the region after the "defeat" of Isis, leaving America's Kurdish allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces at the mercy of the Turkish military, which considers them a terror group.
Jeffrey said he was "very thoroughly briefed" on Trump's call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan after it had happened on 6 October but was not kept in the loop beforehand.
“That specific decision, I was not [told] in advance,” he answered, when pressed by Utah senator Mitt Romney on the question of the withdrawal. Jeffrey did defend the administration, however, on the basis that Obama and George W Bush had made landmark decisions in the region without running it by his predecessors.
Romney asked Jeffrey if it was wrong to conclude that “Erdogan basically said, ‘We’re coming in. Get out of the way,’ and America blinked.”
“It isn’t that we got out of the way because we were not militarily in the way,” Jeffrey answered, insisting that Erdogan's offensive was “absolutely” unrelated to the withdrawal.
(Sha Hanting/Getty)
“I don’t really know why we have someone with the title special representative for Syria engagement and special envoy to the global coalition to defeat Isis if they are not consulted before the president takes the most significant single action affecting US interests in Syria and the future of Isis during his presidency and I think it speaks to the utter chaos of American foreign policy,” commented senator Chris Murphy.
Well, quite.
The only person more damning on the subject was Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who reacted to Jeffrey's comments as the five-day ceasefire agreed by vice president Mike Pence came to an end by saying the US had betrayed and abandoned the Kurds and advised them to retreat from the Syrian border - as per a deal between Moscow and Ankara - or be mauled by the Turkish army.
"The United States has been the Kurds' closest ally in recent years. In the end, it abandoned the Kurds and, in essence, betrayed them," the Russian said. "Now [the Americans] prefer to leave the Kurds at the border and almost force them to fight the Turks."
Support for impeaching Trump has surged among political independents and has risen by three percentage points overall since last week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.
More Americans also said they disapproved of the president's handling of foreign threats. The 18-22 October poll showed public opinion continued to shift as Americans digested a flurry of news over the past several weeks stemming from the congressional impeachment inquiry and his decision to pull troops from Syria.
Overall, 46 per cent of Americans said they supported impeachment and 40 per cent said they opposed it. Support for impeachment was relatively steady among Republicans and Democrats over the past week but it surged among independents, a group that includes people who neither identify as Democrats nor Republicans and do not favor either party when they vote.
Among independents, 45 per cent said in the latest poll they supported impeachment and 32 per cent said they opposed it, the strongest level of support recorded in more than a year. A little more than one in three independents had said they were in favour of impeachment in more than a dozen previous Reuters/Ipsos polls since June 2018.
Trump leveraged his advantage in support among independents to narrowly win the White House in 2016 and it is expected that he will need them again to be re-elected.
Overall, the poll found that Americans were more critical of Trump's handling of US foreign policy and Isis than they were in a similar poll in April. Among Republicans, 73 per cent said they approved of the president's handling of US foreign policy and 75 per cent said they approved of his handling of Isis, down six points and eight points respectively from April.
The White House official who wrote an anonymous op-ed for The New York Times in September 2018 reassuring the public that there are adults in the room carrying out a covert, active resistance to the president is writing a book, entitled A Warning.
The author explained in the piece that there are senior officials “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations", sending "deep state" conspiracy theorists wild in the process.
Trump was not the only subject of ire after his appalling "lynching" tweet yesterday: Joe Biden also found himself with some apologising to do after an old clip of him using the same ill-advised analogy during the Bill Clinton impeachment of 1998 resurfaced online.
Jon Sharman has more.
The last thing 2019 needs is another podcast but we're getting one anyway: ex-Breitbart editor and Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon is starting one called War Room: Impeachment, spun off from a daily radio show being broadcast on six conservative stations in Florida and Virginia.
He says it will be directed at Washington political operatives and grassroots activists, interview right-wing lawyers on the mechanics of the impeachment process and "get very granular".
Bannon tells Politico he is concerned about the “well-oiled Democratic media machine” and doesn't trust the GOP to respond to what he considers "a mortal threat to Trump's presidency": “It doesn’t take an astrophysicist to see that among independents and even Republicans, you’re starting to see a move against the president on this impeachment issue. It’s not being taken seriously.”
Personally, I'll be sticking with Adam Buxton, Athletico Mince and Last Podcast on the Left.
Even Fox News are worried about Trump's attacks on the "Fake News" media, with anchor Brett Baier telling This Morning on CBS that the president's frequent criticism is "a problem".
Baier skirmed uncomfortably when the hosts asked him about the significance of his departing colleague Shep Smith's final words on air: "The truth will always matter".
Two associates of Rudy Giuliani are to be arraigned on Wednesday on charges they used straw donors to make illegal campaign contributions to politicians and committees to advance their business interests.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were expected to plead not guilty in federal court in Manhattan in a case that's cast a harsh light on the business dealings of Trump's personal lawyer.
Prosecutors say Parnas and Fruman made donations while lobbying US politicians to oust the country's ambassador to Ukraine. Giuliani - who at the time was lobbying local officials to investigate the Bidens - has said he knew nothing about the donations.
Prosecutors say Parnas and Fruman worked with two other men, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, in a separate scheme to make illegal campaign donations to politicians in several states in an attempt to get support for a new recreational marijuana business.
Correia and Kukushkin pleaded not guilty last week at a hearing where prosecutor said evidence includes data from over 50 bank accounts and information gathered through 10 search warrants. The prosecutor told the judge that the government's investigation is ongoing.
All the defendants are US citizens, but Kukushkin and Parnas were born in Ukraine and Fruman in Belarus. All are currently free on bail.
In case you missed it, Negar Mortazavi has this delve through the riches revealed by Parnas's private Instagram account.
Trump's own lawyers will meanwhile appear before the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Wednesday morning to urge a three-judge panel to reject a lower court justice's ruling that the president cannot stand in the way of a request from the office of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance for his long-withheld tax returns.
Vance, a Democrat, has sought tax records since 2011 from Trump's longtime accountant Mazars for a criminal probe stemming in part from payments made to buy the silence of two women who claim affairs with the president before the 2016 presidential election. The payments were made to porn star Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, a one-time Playboy centerfold. Both have spoken publicly since Trump took office in early 2017.
Trump's lawyers say the Constitution prohibits states from subjecting the US president to criminal process while he's in office. Vance's attorneys counter that no one is above the law. They also say the records would remain secret because they are sought for a grand jury. But both sides have agreed that no tax records will be demanded until court appeals are finished. It is unclear how quickly the court may rule.
Vance says he's seeking financial and tax records of entities and individuals, including Trump, who engaged in business transactions in Manhattan while Trump's lawyers insist the request is unusual and requires more specific information. "Tellingly, until now, no state or local prosecutor has ever initiated criminal process against a sitting president," they wrote.
Seven retweets from Trump so far this morning, mostly Fox and White House content and only one of which contains an original line from the man himself.
@realDonaldTrump is basically becoming a Ronna McDaniel fan account, so frequently does he retweet the Republican Party's chairwoman.
He's now, inevitably, quoting a friendly Republican on Fox and Friends in a bid to discredit Taylor.
God this is desperate stuff. The Democrats are actually working overtime, busier than ever on the impeachment inquiry.
Here's what's going on with impeachment today.
We were supposed to be hearing from Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, but that has been postponed to make way for memorial services honouring the late head of the House Oversight Committee, Baltimore congressman Elijah Cummings.
All depositions scheduled for Thursday and Friday are also being suspended to make way for events honouring Cummings.
Another new poll, this one from Quinnipiac University, finds an even higher percentage of respondents in favour of Trump's impeachment.
Trump's former secretary for Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen appeared at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in DC yesterday - despite Hillary Clinton, singer Brandi Carlile and filmmaker dream hampton pulling out in opposition to her appearance - and insisted she had no regrets for enforcing the law, despite being made the face of the administration's brutal treatment of migrant families at the Mexican border.
“Under previous administrations, they also enforced this exact law,” Nielsen told interviewer Amna Nawaz. “What is different is the numbers of people have greatly increased over the last few years.”
She also said her reason for resigning in April was because "it became clear that saying no and refusing to do it myself was not going to be enough."
Her appearance did not go unprotested.
A year on from the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a team of Trump advisers including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin are attending the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh as though nothing ever happened.
The State Department's Iran adviser Brian Hook and Kushner associate Avi Berkowitz will also attend the conference nicknamed "Davos in the desert", along with outgoing energy secretary Rick Perry.
In case you need reminding, Trump quickly disavowed the CIA's conclusion that Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing last year. "It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event - maybe he did and maybe he didn't," he said in an utterly worthless statement last November before entirely failing to mention the case when the men met in person in June.
The Senate passed a unanimous resolution holding Bin Salman responsible back in December - but why let a small matter like the political murder of a dissident reporter stand in the way of fruitful business ties?
The Trump Organization has begun removing his name from two ice rinks he owns in Central Park, New York City, so toxic is the brand becoming in his old hometown.
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