David Hale, a senior State Department official, is testifying to the House impeachment inquiry the morning after Donald Trump suffered a series of disastrous electoral setbacks, with the Democrats declaring victory in key races in Virginia and Kentucky.
Mr Trump also finds himself trailing behind Democratic 2020 candidates Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg by double-digit margins on Wednesday, according to the latest poll from ABC News/Washington Post.
Perhaps worst of all, the president’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, a key figure in the impeachment probe, has revised his own testimony, admitting a quid pro quo was behind the decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine and that the administration only planned to release the money in exchange for new president Volodymyr Zelensky announcing an anti-corruption probe into Mr Biden.
The day proceeded with Democrats announcing the first set of public impeachment hearings for next week.
Then, testimony from William Taylor was released in full, showing a worrisome situation for the president.
Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Donald Trump has suffered a series of disastrous setbacks as the Democrats declared victory in key elections in Virginia and Kentucky, gaining control of the former’s House and Senate for the first time since 1993 and claiming a win in the latter’s tightly fought gubernatorial race for Andy Beshear over GOP incumbent Matt Bevin, backed by the president at his Lexington rally on Monday night.
"Tonight, voters in Kentucky sent a message, loud and clear, for everyone to hear," Beshear said. "It’s a message that says our elections don’t have to be about right versus left, they are still about right versus wrong."
Bevin has yet to officially concede at the time of writing.
In Virginia, Democratic governor Ralph Northam told a jubilant crowd in Richmond: "I'm here to officially declare today, 5 November 2019, that Virginia is officially blue."
A year before the presidential election, the results offered warning signs for both parties. Voters in suburban swathes of Kentucky and Virginia sided with Democrats, a trend that would complicate Trump's path to re-election if it holds. And the Democrats who made gains on Tuesday did so by largely avoiding positions such as "Medicare for All" that have animated the party's left flank in the Democratic presidential primary.
Democratic pickups in Virginia occurred in Washington, DC, and Richmond suburbs that had already trended in the party's direction in recent years. Other statewide GOP candidates in Kentucky won by comfortable margins. But the disappointment at the top of the ticket still offered another example in the Trump era of suburban voters' willingness to abandon established Republican loyalties - even with the president making a personal appeal on behalf of a GOP standard-bearer.
“He’s such a pain in the ass, but that’s what you want!” Trump said of the governor during his speech on Monday, Bevin a man deeply unpopular in the state after feuding with local teachers.
"You gotta vote because if you lose, it sends a really bad message," the president told his audience. "It just sends a bad... and they will build it up... If you lose, they'll say 'Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world'. You can't let that happen to me!"
The Republicans did retain the governor's seat in Missippissippi, where the state's lieutenant governor Tate Reeves took the top job from term-limited Phil Bryant after winning a closely contested battle with Democratic attorney general Jim Hood. But even that contest could finish with a single-digit margin in a state Trump won by 28 points three years ago.
The tighter result for Reeves reflected the same suburban trends seen in other states. Heavily Republican counties outside Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee, still tilted to the GOP nominee, but by noticeably narrower margins than what Bryant had four years ago to win a second term.
Legislative seats were also on the ballot in New Jersey, with Democrats positioned to maintain their overwhelming majorities and quell any opportunity for Trump to suggest that the Republicans were encroaching on Democratic territory ahead of 2020.
On Twitter, the president was busy attempting to stage manage the outcome on what proved to be an awful night for his party:
Here's Zamira Rahim's report.
Trump also finds himself trailing behind Democratic 2020 presidential contenders Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg by double-digit margins in the latest poll from ABC News/Washington Post.
Here's our report on some exceedingly grim data for the president.
Perhaps worst of all, the president’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, a key figure in the impeachment inquiry, has revised his testimony, admitting a quid pro quo was behind the decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine and that the administration only planned to release the money in exchange for Volodymyr Zelensky announcing an anti-corruption probe into Biden.
Having initially claimed the president's interactions with Kiev carried no strings, Sondland says in new testimony released by investigators he was aware US assistance to Kiev was dependent on such an undertaking. He also says he suspected the parallel outreach undertaken by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, may have been illegal.
Meanwhile, testimony from another diplomat, the former special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, had revealed that Sondland told investigators he thought the threat to withhold military aid, intended to help support Ukraine against Russia, was “unusual”.
Here's Andrew Buncombe with the latest.
Sondland also reveals in the new transcript that secretary of state Mike Pompeo "rolled his eyes" when when was told about Giuliani’s back channel outreach to top Ukraine officials.
Diplomacy and engagement with foreign nations is typically carried out by professional officials under the direction of the State Department, of course.
Responding to the release of the Volker and Sondland transcripts yesterday - relating to interviews held on the 3 and 17 October respectively - White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham attempted to put out the blazing dumpster fire with little success:
Both transcripts released today show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought. No amount of salacious media-biased headlines, which are clearly designed to influence the narrative, change the fact that the President has done nothing wrong.Ambassador Sondland squarely states that he ‘did not know, [and still does not know] when, why or by whom the aid was suspended.’ He also said he ‘presumed’ there was a link to the aid - but cannot identify any solid source for that assumption.
She later appeared on Lou Dobbs's Fox show to say they actually "vindicate" the president:
Kentucky senator Rand Paul has been threatening to unmask the CIA whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry in recent days, challenging the media to print their name and ignore concerns for the informant's personal safety.
Like Grisham, he too went on Fox to make his case, repeating the threat on Brett Baier's show last night.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is among those to have denounced Paul, declaring on the floor of the upper chamber: I cannot stress just how wrong this is. We have federal whistleblower laws designed to protect the identity and safety of patriotic Americans who come forward to stand up for the Constitution.
Here's Schumer continuing his attack on Paul yesterday...
...which has been joined by Republican rebels like Susan Collins and Roy Blunt.
"Whistleblowers are entitled to protection under the law... to try to reveal the identity of this individual is contrary to the intent of the whistleblower law," Collins told The Huffington Post.
Trump, naturally, thinks it's an "excellent" idea.
The State Department's third-ranking official is expected to tell the House impeachment inquiry today that political considerations were behind the agency's refusal to deliver a robust defence of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
The highest-ranking career diplomat in the foreign service, David Hale, plans to tell congressional investigators on Wednesday that Pompeo and other senior officials determined that defending Yovanovitch would hurt the effort to free up US military assistance to Ukraine.
Hale will also reportedly say that the State Department worried about the reaction from Giuliani, also one of the strongest advocates for her removal.
Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her posting in May, has already appeared before investigators in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. She detailed efforts by Giuliani and other Trump allies to push her out of Ukraine, testifying that a senior Ukrainian official told her that "I really needed to watch my back."
Hale is expected to shed more light on why the State Department did not step up to defend its top envoy in Kiev. According to people familiar with the matter, he will say he tried to distance himself and the department from the matter by removing himself from email chains about Yovanovitch.
Hale, for example, never responded to an email sent by former top Pompeo adviser Michael McKinley urging Pompeo to speak out in defence of Yovanovitch after the White House released a partial transcript of the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call, the officials said.
One official said Hale had "tried to take himself out of the loop on Ukraine." But another said Hale would defend Pompeo's actions as "politically smart" for the State Department and its employees in the long run.
Hale, a fluent Arabic speaker who joined the foreign service in 1984, has served as ambassador to Lebanon, Pakistan and Jordan as well as in posts in Tunisia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
House Republicans are reportedly plotting to temporarily place two Trump hardliners, congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, on the House Intelligence Committee in a bid to shore up the president's defenders on the panel.
The resolution the House passed last Thursday establishing the rules for the public phase of the impeachment inquiry stated that members of the Intelligence Committee would be entitled to question witnesses while those on the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform Committees would not, hence the decision, which promises to add to the theatre of the televised hearings.
“If Democrats are going to turn Intel into the impeachment committee, I am going to make adjustments to that committee accordingly, for a short period of time,” House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told Politco, not naming which current Republican members of the committee he would bump for loyalists Jordan and Meadows.
Here's Jordan discussing the prospect on Fox and Friends yesterday morning.
"That's a Kevin, Leader McCarthy's call. If Kevin and ranking member [Devin] Nunes want that to happen and that helps - I just want to help our team,” Jordan said. “I want to help the country see the truth here that President Trump didn't do anything wrong and what the Democrats are doing is partisan, it's unfair and frankly, it's ridiculous, particularly the way they've went about with these secret meetings in the bunker in the basement of the Capitol."
Meadows has been equally coy, telling reporters: “I think it would be inappropriate of me to comment on that. We have a good team of folks on Intel, I’m sure they will do a good job.”
"But everything has a season and so I look forward to providing a supporting role to my Republican colleagues as they move forward with the public testimony side of things. I can tell you having been in almost every single hour of the depositions, I’m more convinced than ever that my Republican colleagues will be able to see the truth in all of this and the lack of merit some of my Democratic colleagues have been making for many many weeks."
Here's a nice story from yesterday's elections.
Julie Briskman, the cyclist who went viral for flipping the bird at Trump's motorcade in 2017, a gesture that cost her her job, has won a seat on Virginia's state legislature.
She will be representing Loudon County, an area where she has liver her whole life and that just so happens to include the Trump National Golf Club Washington DC.
Vincent Wood has more.
Trump has reportedly approved an expanded US military mission to secure an expanse of oil fields across eastern Syria.
The president’s actions raise a number of legal questions about whether American troops can launch attacks against Syrian, Russian or other forces if they threaten the oil but, after meeting with defence leaders on Friday, he decided to go ahead with the call to commit servicepeople to defending a large swath of land controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters stretching from Deir Ezzor to al-Hassakeh.
This comes despite Trump’s promise to get the bulk of the more than 1,200 American soldiers out of the country.
Here's Samuel Osborne's report.
Trump spoke with Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador last night to condemn the killing of nine members of an American Mormon family in an ambush on a dirt road in Bavispe, Sonora, to the north of the country. Three US mothers, twin babies and four other children were murdered in the incident.
"President Trump made clear that the United States condemns these senseless acts of violence that took the lives of nine American citizens and offered Mexico assistance to ensure the perpetrators face justice," deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, Trump had offered US forces to help Mexico "wage war" on the drug cartels by tweet in response to the attack.
That offer that was politely rejected by Obrador who said at press conference: “We are very grateful to President Trump - to any foreign government which wants to help - but in these cases we have to act independently and according to our constitution, and in line with our tradition of independence and sovereignty.”
"War is synonymous with irrationality. We are for peace.”
Here's Jon Sharman's report.
A little more on the Republicans' impeachment fightback stragegy as Trump and his legal team reportedly work to organise a defence that will rely heavily on White House attorneys and congressional GOP members staving off the threat to his presidency.
Democrats consider the upcoming public hearings to be their best chance at putting the president's behaviour on display for the benefit of the American people before a politically fraught impeachment vote. Trump's allies, for their part, see the hearings as an opportunity to fight their man's corners and push the idea the inquiry is an establishment conspiracy. The political lens through which both sides are viewing the hearings is informing the president's legal strategy, according to Trump's supporters.
The White House counsel's office is currently expected to take the lead in mounting the president's defence, according to a person familiar with the legal strategy who spoke anonymously to the AP. The arrangement will put government attorneys, rather than the president's personal lawyers, on the front lines of Trump's attempt to fend off Democratic efforts to remove him from office.
The White House attorneys will be bolstered by the roster of GOP lawmakers like the aforementioned Jordan and Meadows and Matt Gaetz and Steve Scalise, who have already been serving as the president's de facto defence counsel in closed-door hearings.
Transcripts of depositions released this week show Republican lawmakers taking steps to try to undermine the credibility of witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. Other legislators have sought to publicly unmask the whistleblower whose summer complaint served as the catalyst for the impeachment probe.
Further involvement by the lawyers is expected once hearings move to the Judiciary Committee as the rules established by the House vote last week permit them to attend. Additionally, the president's counsel is to be granted access to the committee's evidence and granted the ability to question witnesses. The White House official dismissed the idea that the president would attend.
The decision to put the counsel's office out in front in responding to the impeachment inquiry was reportedly made because the congressional probe centers on actions that Trump took as president. That's in contrast to the impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, which involved allegations that he lied about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and sought to obstruct an investigation into the affair.
It gives Trump the image of being represented by the White House counsel, rather than private attorneys whose prominence in the proceedings, they believe, might diminish his stature. It also keeps the legal team that still includes embattled former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani away from the spotlight.
In the first year of FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the administration added a special in-house lawyer, Ty Cobb, to respond to prosecutors' requests for documents and interviews with White House staff. Cobb was later replaced by another attorney, Emmet Flood. The president also relied on a team of personal attorneys, including Giuliani, to handle negotiations with Mueller's team on matters such as terms for an interview.
"The rationale is correct as far as it goes, but I also think that there's good reason to not have the White House counsel's office take the lead on this," said Timothy Flanigan, a former deputy counsel to George W Bush. "The White House counsel's office has a lot to do. It's not clear to me that it's always a good idea for the White House counsel to get involved in a project of this magnitude."
Still, there can be benefits in having the counsel's office intimately involved in an investigation like this, simply by virtue of familiarity with the events. "They've obviously spent a lot of time with whatever documents there are and whatever information there is," Flanigan said.
Trump's supporters, meanwhile, can be expected to try to minimise the threat of the impeachment inquiry by casting the Mueller probe as one that was more perilous in nature. They aim to paint impeachment as a done deal given the Democratic majority in the House and argue that any outcome short of removal of the president through conviction in the Senate is a victory for Trump.
Additional reporting by AP
California's Supreme Court is considering today whether Trump must disclose his tax returns if he wants to be a candidate in the state's primary election next spring. The high court is hearing arguments even though a federal judge already temporarily blocked the state law requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to be included in the state's primary.
The justices' consideration comes the same week that a federal appeals court in New York ruled that Trump's tax returns can be turned over to state criminal investigators there, although that ruling is expected to be appealed to the US Supreme Court.
The California Republican Party and chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson filed the state lawsuit challenging Democratic governor Gavin Newsom's signing in July of the law aimed at the Republican president.
Newsom, incidentally, feuded publically with the president over the weekend after Trump threatened to pull federal funding being used to help tackle the state's wildfire crisis.
The tax returns law is a clear violation of the California Constitution, opponents argued, citing a 1972 voter-approved amendment they said guarantees that all recognised candidates must be on the ballot. Previously, "California politicians rigged the primary election, putting up 'favorite son' nominees for partisan political advantage," they wrote, suggesting that Democratic lawmakers are doing the same thing now by different means.
The opponents said keeping Trump off the ballot could lower voter turnout in the primary, hurting Republican legislative and congressional candidates' chances of reaching the general election. That's because California's top-two primary system sends the two highest vote-getters in the primary to the general election regardless of party. But the state's lawyers said it's a common-sense requirement so that voters can gauge candidates' "financial status and honesty concerning financial matters."
The justices sped up their usual timetable to hear the arguments because the deadline to file tax returns for California's 3 March presidential primary would be 26 November if the law survives. But the state's appeal of the federal judge's order will extend past that deadline, with the next court filings not due to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals until December. State officials would not say why they have not sought a faster review or if that means they are giving up on getting Trump's returns in time for next year's election.
Most major Democratic presidential candidates already publicly disclosed their personal income tax returns. Trump broke with decades of tradition in refusing to release his returns, citing an ongoing Internal Revenue Service audit.
California was the first state to require political candidates to disclose their personal income tax returns. New York state passed a law giving congressional committees access to Trump's state tax returns, which Trump has also challenged in court.
The situation in the New York case is much different, with the appeals court ruling that Trump's tax returns can be turned over to a grand jury that would usually keep them from public view.
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr is seeking the returns as part of a broader investigation that includes payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal, both of whom claim they had affairs with the president before the 2016 presidential election.
Additional reporting by AP
Trump's short-lived press secretary turned regular nuisance Anthony Scaramucci was on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning and had some damning things to say about his erstwhile employer and his 2020 prospects.
Vincent Wood was listening.
Ace satirist and all-round genius Armando Iannucci has been explaining why he declined offers from Hollywood studios to turn the Trump tweet below into a blockbuster film.
“I just didn’t want to spend a year with Donald Trump,” he told Deadline.
I wish I'd said the same.
Marianne Eloise has the full story for Indy100.
Trump's first tweet of the day is very much what you'd expect - defiant and divorced from reality.
Here's Zamira Rahim with more on last night's humiliation in Kentucky, doubly embarrassing for the president after his plea to voters at his Lexington rally on Monday.
Whatever Trump says, Democrat Andy Bearshear's election as governor is surely a crushing development for the state senator and chief Trump enabler Mitch McConnell, who must begin to wonder whether his grasp on a once-reliable red state is slipping.
Your latest Fox and Friends quote from a man sailing past Nixon levels of paranoia.
Democratic 2020 front-runner Joe Biden, who struggled somewhat to get his message across in Iowa over the weekend, has hit out at one of his chief rivals, Elizabeth Warren, labelling her a "condescending elitist" and attacking her brand of "my way or the highway" politics in a Medium post.
Don Jr's attempt to defend his father against accusations he is racist in his new book is making waves for the wrong reasons.
The president's eldest son explains in Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us that his old man cannot be racist because he allowed Jr and his brother Eric to play video games with Michael Jackson (!) during their adolescence.
So that's all right then.
That would be the same book, incidentally, that Trump has spent 2020 campaign funds bulk ordering to shill to supporters.
Here's our report.
