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Adam Schiff says Republicans in Congress face stark choice on Trump – live
Trump impeachment inquiry: Democrats ask Mike Pence for Ukraine documents – live
(about 6 hours later)
Remember when Trump said “I don’t want to make money. I don’t care about making money” in explaining why he wanted to host the G7 summit at one of his struggling Florida resorts?
Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign has fired a senior staff member following an investigation into allegations of “inappropriate behavior”, according to Politico.
Before departing for Walter Reed National Military Medical Center just then, Trump told reporters why he was pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation of the owner of a gas company on whose board Joe Biden’s son once sat.
“Over the past two weeks, senior campaign leadership received multiple complaints regarding inappropriate behavior by Rich McDaniel,” a campaign spokesperson told Politico. “Over the same time period, the campaign retained outside counsel to conduct an investigation. Based on the results of the investigation, the campaign determined that his reported conduct was inconsistent with its values and that he could not be a part of the campaign moving forward.”
“I don’t care about Biden’s campaign. I care about corruption,” Trump said.
McDaniel had served as the national organizing director for the campaign. He previously worked on Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and Alabama Senator Doug Jones 2017 special election campaign.
Trump also continued to insist that the text messages among diplomats and other evidence to come out so far in the impeachment inquiry do not establish a “quid pro quo”.
Earlier today, Warren’s campaign reported a massive fundraising haul of $24.6m for the past three months, solidifying her status as a top contender for the Democratic nomination.
“That’s the whole ballgame,” Trump said.
Next on the docket for the impeachment inquiry, according to CBS News reporter Olivia Gazis will be US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland.
“There is no pro quo,” Trump said, adding, “That was in the text message that I saw and it nullified everything.”
New: U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland will appear for a closed-door deposition before House committees on Tuesday, October 8, per a congressional source. Same format as Volcker’s appearance.
Here’s the bit from the text messages Trump is referring to. It comes at the end of the material released by Congress last night, and is preceded by five pages of text message exchanges in which US diplomats and an assistant to the Ukrainian president try to arrange a deal which no person who does not also happen to be a strong Trump supporter has denied is a quid pro quo:
My colleague Julian Borger had this to say about Sondland, who played a starring role in the text messages released last night:
Taylor [career diplomat]: As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.
The third man is Gordon Sondland, a wealthy hotelier who paid $1m to fund Trump’s inauguration and was then given the job of ambassador to the European Union last year. He has no previous diplomatic experience and Ukraine, not being a EU member, is not on his turf.
Sondland [political appointee and Trump donor, 4.5 hours later]: Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind…”
But it is clear from the texts that Sondland is in charge and driving the hard bargain with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy: do what we tell you or forget about a White House visit and a reboot of US-Ukrainian relations.
Does any elected Republican have an opinion about the coordinated state department effort, overseen by Mike Pompeo, allegedly to pressure Ukraine to mount a spectacle Trump could use to smear his anticipated 2020 opponent?
Sondland derives his authority by his connection to the White House – a power he repeatedly flaunts in his texts.
GOP Senators choosing to stay quiet---neither criticizing Trump or defending him---seems like inaction, but one concrete consequence it has is that Trump has to roll out B-level surrogates to defend him in public.
You can read more of Julian’s analysis here.
Or does anyone want to weigh in on Trump’s call for China to “investigate” Biden?
The top lawyer in the CIA believed that the conduct described in the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s Ukraine call indicated that a potential crime was committed, according to a new report by NBC News.
CNN notes GOP Senators' silence on Trump urging China to investigate the Bidens pic.twitter.com/POxu9raVwn
Courtney Simmons Elwood, the Trump-appointed CIA general counsel, contacted the justice department about the report and “intended the call ... to make a criminal referral about the president’s conduct, acting under rules set forth in a memo governing how intelligence agencies should report allegations of federal crimes”, according to the report.
CNN: Trump "promised Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US would remain quiet on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong while trade talks continued"https://t.co/YGZrmgAboN
The justice department’s decision not to open an investigation has drawn scrutiny and criticism.
CNN reporting that Trump told China he would keep quiet on Hong Kong protests until trade war was over. What a deal - the U.S. loses hundreds of thousands of jobs from Trump’s insane tariffs and ALSO we abandon the people of Hong Kong. Is this real?
From the report:
Trump’s great anti-corruption crusade, which he claims was behind his pressuring the Ukrainian president to announce investigations of certain people, extends to... extends to... look over there! [runs away]
Elwood, the CIA’s general counsel, first learned about the matter because the complainant, a CIA officer, passed his concerns about the president on to her through a colleague. On Aug. 14, she participated in a conference call with the top national security lawyer at the White House and the chief of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
I asked President Trump if he had ever asked any foreign leaders for corruption investigations of anyone who was NOT a political opponent of his. He said we’ll have to check that. pic.twitter.com/hKP7n9l1Kw
On that call, Elwood and John Eisenberg, the top legal adviser to the White House National Security Council, told the top Justice Department national security lawyer, John Demers, that the allegations merited examination by the DOJ, officials said ...
Cornyn’s office is trying to say his misleading and confusing tweet (see earlier) this morning in defense of Trump was a mistake on the senator’s part. Whoops. At this writing the tweet has not been deleted.
A DOJ official said Attorney General William Barr was made aware of the conversation with Elwood and Eisenberg, and their concerns about the president’s behavior, in the days that followed.
Spox says Cornyn was referring to the ongoing probe led by Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut who is investigating the origins of the Russia probe https://t.co/kLGAJLOjpb
Read the rest of the report here.
The Durham probe has nothing to do with Biden so far as anybody knows. But Cornyn’s mischaracterization of the probe enabled him to draw a false and thin comparison between congress’ current investigation of Trump and the 2016 Russia investigation.
Hello everyone this is Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco picking up our live coverage of US politics for the rest of your Friday afternoon.
An investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe is VERY MUCH NOT THE SAME THING as an investigation into the Biden family's business dealings in Ukraine. Yet top Republicans from the White House to the Senate keep conflating them. Weird!
Vice president Mike Pence’s office has responded to the request for documents from the impeachment inquiry by saying that “it does not appear to be a serious request”.
Republicans have been trying for weeks now to hone their defense of Trump – there was no quid pro quo, the Democrats have lost their minds – and as Cornyn demonstrates, they still have some more trying to do.
VP office on House Dem request for info: “it not appear to be a serious request...” pic.twitter.com/n3FT3MWHtv
Republicans flail as they seek coherent strategy against impeachment
Here’s a summary of where things stand:
But they are a persistent bunch:
Text messages among US diplomats and a Ukrainian official showed the diplomats trying to work out a deal in which the Ukrainian president would announce an investigation of a company tied to Joe Biden’s son, and then Trump would host the president at the White House. They also discussed military aid for Ukraine which had been suspended by Trump.
A reminder to federal officials: There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute. If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Obama or Mr. Brennan, now is the time to report it. https://t.co/RNMymRVmZP
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” one diplomat texted.
In one text message published overnight, Trump political appointee Gordon Sondland, a hotel company executive, major Trump donor and now US ambassador to the European Union, urges a colleague to procure a commitment by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce an investigation that Trump could tout as a probe into corruption supposedly linked to Joe Biden: “I think potus really wants the deliverable”, Sondland wrote.
Trump said he only wanted to root out “corruption”: “I don’t care about Biden’s campaign. I care about corruption.”
In a news conference Friday, the current prosecutor general of Ukraine, Ruslan Riaboshapka ,announced his office would undertake a review of all cases closed by his predecessor, including a criminal case against an oligarch who owns a gas company on whose board Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, once sat.
House committees involved in the impeachment inquiry requested documents from vice president Mike Pence about “any role you may have played” in the Ukraine negotiations.
Did Trump just get his “deliverable”? This isn’t the public statement by Zelenskiy Trump was looking for, but the timing makes it possible that it is an attempt by the Ukrainians to play ball lest they endanger future military aid or the chances of Zelenskiy visiting Trump in Washington.
Republican senator Ron Johnson said he heard Trump had linked US military aid for Ukraine to a request for dirt on Biden, but Trump told Johnson there was no such link.
It’s important to note that there’s no evidence of any untoward behavior by either Biden in connection with that aforementioned or any other case the Ukrainian prosecutor might investigate. And “this is an audit not a re-opening of the investigations,” the BBC said. But it’s not hard to imagine how Trump might attempt to use news of this audit for his political ends.
Republicans were mostly silent on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and a Trump request of China to investigate Biden.
Lawfare quotes the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoting the General Prosecutor as stating:
But senator Mitt Romney called Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and China “wrong” and “appalling.”
“Now we are conducting an audit of those cases that were previously investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO). In the area you are talking about, where Zlochevskiy, [Ukrainian businessman Serhiy] Kurchenko and other people or companies could be involved, there are a half and a dozen such cases. We are now reviewing all the cases which were closed, fragmented or investigated earlier in order to make a decision on cases where illegal procedural decisions were taken,” he said, answering a question about the prosecution of defendants in the Burisma case.
A deadline for secretary of state Mike Pompeo to comply with a congressional subpoena of documents and testimony loomed at day’s end Friday.
Read further.
The Treasury inspector general opened an inquiry into a refusal by the Treasury to turn over Trump tax documents to Congress.
Basic stuff:
A hacking group that appears to be linked to the Iranian government has targeted a US presidential campaign, Microsoft Corp said on Friday. The campaign was not named.
Mike Pence in the 2016 vice presidential debate: "This is basic stuff. Foreign donors — and certainly foreign governments — cannot participate in the American political process." pic.twitter.com/vbrPjqda1i
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren raised $24.6m over the past three months, relying largely on a massive small donor operation.
Further reaction to the news of day... and the Republicans’ insistence that there was no quid pro quo baked into Trump’s chat with the Ukrainian president:
Trump is preparing to speak at the Turning Point USA Black Leadership Summit, a showcase for conservative leaders and activists.
As everyone knows, if you say “but this isn’t a quid pro quo” during your conspiracy, that automatically makes it legally permissible. It’s like touching base in freeze tag
Live stream here:
Some commentators are spotlighting the role of acting US ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, who wrote a text saying, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign”:
What would this guy know about i– oh. He’s a senator. A Democratic senator says the whole Senate knew about Trump’s alleged scheme to hold up aid for Ukraine until he got his Biden deliverable:
Bill Taylor is a West Point grad, Vietnam vet, and career public servant. He is our chief diplomat in Ukraine and an expert on the country.If Taylor believes the aid was withheld to get the interference, that’s big news. https://t.co/ixp8nqdf3q
The whole Senate knew what was happening, in real time. https://t.co/JSPb4rEk1d
I keep imagining him walking around the last couple months asking "can you say that again a little more clearly and right into this lapel?" https://t.co/Bj44Vwet3q
Did any senators raise alarms about Trump’s alleged conduct? Did they view it as problematic? Now that they’ve had multiple months to think about what Trump was allegedly doing, can they tell the public what they think about it?
Will Republicans continue to stand behind Trump, as he sells out the United States, allegedly, in an effort to remain president?
What else do they know about?
Texas senator John Cornyn is on board this morning, in a rather confusing way, which confusion might be the point. Cornyn compares a current justice department probe of the roots of the Russia investigation, which itself is tendentious, to the Barack Obama-era FBI investigation of the Trump campaign. Same thing, Cornyn contends, no impeachment necessary.
FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker on the impeachment question, which charts polling averages, currently has 46.5% of respondents supporting impeachment and 44.8% opposing it. The trendlines are toward impeachment at the moment. A new poll from Economist/YouGov could be an outlier – or it could represent an extension of the trendlines:
But Trump does not face impeachment over a justice department investigation. He faces impeachment because he is allegedly pressuring foreign countries to tamper in the upcoming US election. (And so far as is publicly known, the justice department is not investigating “VP Biden conflicts of interest,” as Cornyn says.)
Economist/YouGov Poll:should House try to impeach Trump?50% yes39% noif House impeaches, should Senate remove Trump from office?51% yes39% no
Now, the Trump Justice Department is investigating foreign government influence, VP Biden conflicts of interest, and possible corruption,
Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa was confronted by a constituent Thursday noting Trump’s call for China to investigate Biden. The constituent asks “where is the line?” when it comes to loyalty to Trump. The question was about what Ernst would do but she answers by saying she can’t speak for Trump.
Cornyn’s tweet underscores the stakes here. Trump does not need to convince all of America he’s not a criminal. He just needs to keep Republicans onside.
Iowa resident asks Sen. Joni Ernst: "Where is the line? When are you guys going to say, ‘enough,' and stand up and say, ‘You know what, I’m not backing any of this?'" Sen. Ernst: "The president is going to say what the president if going to do…I can't speak for him." pic.twitter.com/2N0zKeFSCo
For Trump to "win" he doesn't need to have a credible legal defense against the charges levied against him, he just needs to ensure 20 GOP Senators don't switch sides. It's about a political argument to their supporters. If they can be convinced by lies, fine. A win's a win.
House Democrats have requested Ukraine documents from Mike Pence for the impeachment inquiry.
Conservative commentator Matt Lewis thinks Republicans might turn on Trump:
A letter from three House committees requests documents from the vice-president by 15 October including any relating to the 25 July phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy and an earlier call.
As more info drops out, I’m starting to think there’s actually a *chance* Trump could lose 20 Senate Republicans. (The odds of this are still waaaay low, but this is the first time I’ve thought it was even within the realm of possibility.)
“Recently, public reports have raised questions about any role you may have played in conveying or reinforcing the President’s stark message to the Ukrainian president,” the letter says.
But Trump’s normalizing technique to make his alleged crimes acceptable has been shown to be effective.
Trump has used Pence to put pressure on Ukraine in recent months – but Pence was supposedly ignorant about Trump’s desire to gin up a Biden-Ukraine scandal, according to a Washington Post report citing unnamed officials this week:
Trump covers up his high Crimes until they’re exposed — then says “So what? I’ll do it again: here, watch me. See? That didn’t hurt so much, did it?” It’s a normalizing technique that works — until it doesn’t.
Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May — an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar — when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.
Adam Schiff, the chairman of the intelligence committee, which is heading up the impeachment inquiry, replies to a Donald Trump tweet in which Trump claims he was acting against “corruption” when he used military aid and the promise of a White House visit to pressure the Ukrainian president to create a public spectacle that Trump could use to attack Joe Biden:
Months later, the president used Pence to tell Zelensky that U.S. aid was still being withheld while demanding more aggressive action on corruption, officials said. At that time — following Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenksy — the Ukrainians probably understood action on corruption to include the investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
It comes down to this.We’ve cut through the denials. The deflections. The nonsense.Donald Trump believes he can pressure a foreign nation to help him politically. It’s his “right.”Every Republican in Congress has to decide: Is he right? https://t.co/DpftzJ0ydN
That Pence-Zelenskiy meeting happened in Warsaw on 1 September, just more than one month after the late July phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy, which was monitored by Pence’s national security adviser, retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, who would have then briefed the vice president on the call.
Just how serious is Donald Trump in his worldwide quest to root out corruption, wherever it may arise?
But Pence claims to have somehow missed the part about Trump’s Biden ask.
Inside Trump's DC hotel, where allies and lobbyists flock to peddle their interests
Republican Senator Ron Johnson, still talking about that one weird time when he heard the Trump administration had tied aid for Ukraine to political favors:
Trump University: court upholds $25m settlement to give students' money back
.@SenRonJohnson tells reporters he tried to get permission from President Donald Trump to tell Ukraine's president U.S. aid was on its way in the wake of allegations Trump was withholding it until Ukraine investigated his political rival.Johnson said he wasn't successful.
Nepotism and corruption: the handmaidens of Trump's presidency | Jill Abramson
In response to a request by Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal, the inspector general of the treasury department “is investigating how Treasury handled a congressional request for President Trump’s tax returns, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to turn over,” the New York Times reports:
FBI releases documents on Trump Organization after years of resistance
Chairman Neal has asked Treasury O.I.G. to inquire into the process by which the department received, evaluated, and responded to the committee’s request for federal tax information,” said Rich Delmar, Treasury’s acting inspector general. “We are undertaking that inquiry.”
How many of Donald Trump's advisers have been convicted?
A whistleblower inside the Internal Revenue Service filed a complaint this summer that senior Treasury officials – Trump appointees – might have tampered with or blocked an audit of Trump’s taxes.
New York tax authorities investigating Trump fraud allegations
Am getting tired of hearing about how "corrupt" Ukraine is. You know which country is corrupt? The United States. We have a president who is using the White House to make money, presidential children who are using their father's prestige to make money.
With this new “rooting out corruption” line, the GOP is going all in on OJ’s search for the real killers https://t.co/qh2ghLd6sI
Hello and welcome to our US politics live blog coverage. It’s Friday and the overnight news in the United States is big.
Just before midnight Thursday, three House committees involved in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump released a letter advising colleagues of discoveries they had made over the course of nine hours of testimony that day by Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy to Ukraine.
Attached to the letter were six pages of transcripts of text messages among Volker; acting US ambassador to the Ukraine Bill Taylor; US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland; and an aide to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelinskiy.
The text messages capture a running conversation among the diplomats about how to fulfill a demand from “Potus” and his personal agent, Rudy Giuliani, that Zelinskiy make a public statement that Ukraine would investigate a company tied to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.
In exchange for the public statement, the diplomats dangle an official White House invitation for Zelinskiy. Also on the table is a large military aid package for Ukraine that Donald Trump had suspended.
While Volker and Sondland appear to scurry to seal the deal, (“I think Potus really wants the deliverable,” Sondland writes), Taylor uses the text exchange to memorialize what he believes is outrageous conduct. “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” he says in one text.
Sondland replies, implausibly, that nobody is talking about a quid-pro-quo here.
Read our news coverage:
US diplomats told Zelenskiy that Trump visit was dependent on Biden statement
At the center of the current impeachment inquiry against Trump is the allegation that he used the power of the presidency to wrest help for his political campaign from foreign countries.
Many people read the text exchange as jaw-droppingly powerful evidence of exactly that conduct.
All week I’ve been saying you never see direct written evidence of a quid pro quo. I stand corrected. https://t.co/DIWPEy5b0X
‘I think potus really wants the deliverable’ is going to go down in the history books along with ‘do us a favor though’ #ukraine
Waking up to all of this new evidence. Shows impeachment constitutionally required. Damning and sad.This is just the first week of the investigation. Trump's factual defense has already collapsed. https://t.co/WU4V1tHwyo
The question at this point is how many times, and with how many foreign leaders, has Trump offered to alter US policy in exchange for help from abroad in interfering in US elections.
A Note to US Gov't Employees:If you've seen illegal acts by Trump or Trump appointees & you keep it to yourself, not only are you failing in your responsibility to the country you're opening yourself up to liability & speculation about your motives.See something, say something.
Don’t call these texts dumb. Taylor was building a file. If we save the country, his determination to put the facts on record will be an important reason why. Sonderland not dumb either. He recognized what Taylor was doing and demanded Taylor cease. Which Taylor refused to do
Ambassadors Yovanovitch and Taylor are American heros.
