Category: Impeachment

Trump rails against impeachment inquiry as key White House witness testifies

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President Trump on Tuesday railed against the impeachment inquiry into his alleged abuse of power ahead of key testimony from a White House official that threatens to deepen the president’s problems.

Trump tweeted or retweeted dozens of messages denying wrongdoing, chastising Democrats for their handling of the impeachment proceedings thus far and questioning the credibility of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who will meet behind closed doors with lawmakers on Tuesday.

“Supposedly, according to the Corrupt Media, the Ukraine call ‘concerned’ today’s Never Trumper witness,” Trump tweeted. “Was he on the same call that I was? Can’t be possible! Please ask him to read the Transcript of the call. Witch Hunt!”

In another tweet, Trump questioned “How many more Never Trumpers will be allowed to testify” and asked “why so many” people were listening in on his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The president repeatedly urged his followers on Tuesday to read a White House rough transcript of the call, which was released in September. The document shows Trump urging Zelensky to look into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and a company with ties to the Russia investigation.

Vindman on Tuesday will become the first official who was on the call to testify. He will tell lawmakers that he was troubled by Trump urging Zelensky to investigate a political rival and reported it to his supervisor, worrying that the president’s conduct threatened to undermine U.S. national security, according to a copy of his opening statement obtained by The Hill.

Vindman is a Ukrainian American immigrant and received the Purple Heart for his service in Iraq.

The July 25 call, a whistleblower complaint about the conversation and testimony from several administration officials have formed the basis of the ongoing impeachment inquiry. The House is scheduled to vote this week to formalize the inquiry and lay out rules to govern the process.

Republicans and White House allies have spent recent weeks hammering Democrats over transparency and questioning the legitimacy of the impeachment inquiry without a formal vote. But in light of Democrats agreeing to hold such a vote, the president’s backers have shifted their message.

Trump on Tuesday retweeted dozens of messages from Republican lawmakers and conservative voices blasting the process as a “sham” and disputing that holding a formal vote at this point in the process changes that.

“A vote now is a bit like un-Ringing a bell as House Democrats have selectively leaked information in order to damage President @realDonaldTrump for weeks,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted in one message shared by Trump.

“Codifying a sham process halfway through doesn’t make it any less of a sham process,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in another message the president retweeted.

While Republicans have largely focused their complaints on process, Trump has fixated on the substance of the investigation and repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

“I’d rather go into the details of the case rather than process,” Trump said Monday. “Process is good. But I think you ought to look at the case. And the case is very simple. It’s quick. It’s so quick.”

The president’s insistence that he has done nothing wrong puts Republicans in a difficult spot, particularly in the Senate, where some GOP lawmakers have been hesitant to defend Trump’s actions.

Most Republican senators backed a resolution last week condemning the impeachment inquiry against Trump and calling on the House to hold a formal vote on the inquiry. But the document largely focused on process, and a few key senators have yet to sign on to it in support.

[The Hill]

Trump goes on Twitter tear after White House official condemns his Ukraine call

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President Donald Trump launched a sustained online offensive Tuesday morning after details emerged of damaging congressional testimony by a senior White House official — retweeting numerous messages by Republican lawmakers assailing the latest developments in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

The flurry of activity on the president’s social media feed came just hours before Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council staffer overseeing Ukraine policy, was due to tell investigators on Capitol Hill that Trump undermined U.S. national security when he pressured Ukraine’s president in a July phone call to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

“Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call,” Trump tweeted. “Just READ THE CALL TRANSCRIPT AND THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX IS OVER! Ukrain said NO PRESSURE.”

Vindman is the first witness in the impeachment probe who listened in on Trump’s call with President Volodymyr Zelensky, and his testimony appears to corroborate both a whistleblower complaint lodged by an anonymous member of the intelligence community who was alarmed by accounts of the conversation, as well as a summary of the call released by the White House.

“Supposedly, according to the Corrupt Media, the Ukraine call ‘concerned’ today’s Never Trumper witness. Was he on the same call that I was? Can’t be possible! Please ask him to read the Transcript of the call. Witch Hunt!” Trump wrote, without offering any evidence that Vindman is biased against him.

“How many more Never Trumpers will be allowed to testify about a perfectly appropriate phone call when all anyone has to do is READ THE TRANSCRIPT!” the president also posted. “I knew people were listening in on the call (why would I say something inappropriate?), which was fine with me, but why so many?”

Trump last week similarly claimed to not know William Taylor, the top American envoy to Ukraine, deriding the State Department official as a “Never Trumper Diplomat” after Taylor directly tied the president to a quid pro quo with Ukraine during testimony before lawmakers.

Among the roughly four dozen tweets or retweets Trump issued Tuesday morning, the president shared missives by prominent GOP defenders in Congress including Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Doug Collins of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Devin Nunes of California.

Many of those messages criticized a resolution by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats, set to be voted upon by the full chamber Thursday, formalizing the next steps of the impeachment inquiry.

“Pelosi announces they’ll finally vote to open the impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a post Trump retweeted Tuesday. “Codifying a sham process halfway through doesn’t make it any less of a sham process.”

Meanwhile, allies of the White House on cable news advanced a new line of attack against Vindman — whose family fled Ukraine when he was a child — suggesting without evidence that the foreign-born public servant was more loyal to his native country than the U.S.

“We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from. Like me, I’m sure that Vindman has the same affinity,” former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.) told CNN on Tuesday.

“He’s entitled to his opinion,” Duffy said. “He has an affinity, I think, for the Ukraine. He speaks Ukrainian, he came from the country, and he wants to make sure they’re safe and free. I understand that.”

Duffy sought to walk back his on-air remarks in a tweet later Tuesday morning, characterizing Vindman as “an American war hero“ and writing: “My point is that Mr. Vindman is an unelected advisor, he gives ADVICE. President Trump sets the policy.“

Vindman, an Army combat veteran of the Iraq War who received a Purple Heart after being wounded in an IED attack, described himself as a “patriot” in his opening statement to lawmakers Tuesday, writing that “it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country, irrespective of party or politics.”

“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade acknowledged Vindman’s military service Tuesday, but asserted: “He tends to feel simpatico with the Ukraine.”

John Yoo, a Justice Department official in former President George W. Bush’s administration, was more explicit in challenging Vindman’s allegiance on Monday evening.

After Fox News host Laura Ingraham promoted a story by The New York Times which mentioned that Ukrainian officials sought advice from Vindman on how to deal with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, Yoo told her: “Some people might call that espionage.“

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) denounced those comments as “despicable“ on Tuesday. “This is not normal. There’s nothing normal about this,“ he told MSNBC.

Even Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the third-ranking House GOP lawmaker, spoke out forcefully against “questioning the dedication to country of people like Mr. Vindman” and others who have been deposed as part of the impeachment inquiry.

“It is shameful to question their patriotism, their love of this nation, and we should not be involved in that process,” she said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) also warned Republicans homing in on Vindman that “it would be a mistake to attack his credibility.”

“You can obviously take issue with the substance, and there are different interpretations about all that stuff,” he told POLITICO. “But I wouldn’t go after him personally. He’s a patriot.”

[Politico]

TRUMP THREATENS TO SUE DEMOCRATS AND ‘SHIFTY ADAM SCHIFF’ FOR FRAUD OVER IMPEACHMENT

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President Donald Trump spent early Friday evening denouncing the “impeachment scam” by Democrats and said his lawyers should sue the Democrats and “Shifty Adam Schiff” for fraud. The president, through tweets, said he had a “perfect Ukrainian call” and that Democrats not wanting Whistleblower testimony anymore furthers what he calls a “witch hunt.”

The president wrote Friday:

“Democrats just announced that they no longer want the Whistleblower to testify. But everything was about the Whistleblower (they no longer want the second Whistleblower either), which they don’t want because the account of my call bore NO RELATIONSHIP to the call itself…..,” Trump tweeted.

“…The entire Impeachment Scam was based on my perfect Ukrainian call, and the Whistleblowers account of that call, which turned out to be false (a fraud?). Once I released the actual call, their entire case fell apart. The Democrats must end this Scam now. Witch Hunt!”

Three minutes after that pair of tweets, the president said his lawyers should sue Rep. Adam Schiff, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his Democrat colleagues.

“My lawyers should sue the Democrats and Shifty Adam Schiff for fraud!”

The calls for Trump’s impeachment has grown exponentially among Democrats this calendar year, from freshmen representatives like Rashida Tlaib to veteran lawmakers like Maxine Waters, Al Green and the late Elijah Cummings.

Schiff has been the most notable House member pushing impeachment, after reports of the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Democrats say Trump’s call was to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads most 2020 Democratic presidential candidate polls, and his son, Hunter Biden.

Trump said the call was to congratulate Zelensky on his victory and that he told the Ukrainian president they could quickly improve their image.

In August, a whistleblower filed a complaint with Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, in regards to the Ukrainian phone call by Trump. A month later, Trump acknowledged bringing up Biden’s name in the phone call.

On Sept. 24, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s actions. A day later, the White House released a transcript of the Ukraine call.

Trump has called the impeachment inquiry a “scam” and “witch hunt,” and began targeting the whistleblower, asking for a personal interview with them.

Three weeks ago, the White House indicated it would not cooperate with House Democrats’ impeachment inquiries.

While each side has threatened lawsuits against each other, it was President Trump on Friday encouraging his side to sue the Democrats and Rep. Schiff in the latest round of the impeachment standoff.

[Newsweek]

Trump begs Democrats to end impeachment ‘now’ in tweets full of lies

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President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to sue the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee for fraud during a rant against the impeachment inquiry.

Trump made multiple inaccuracies during his rant, denying facts that had been admitted by himself, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and defense attorney Rudy Giuliani.

“Democrats just announced that they no longer want the Whistleblower to testify. But everything was about the Whistleblower (they no longer want the second Whistleblower either), which they don’t want because the account of my call bore NO RELATIONSHIP to the call itself ….The entire Impeachment Scam was based on my perfect Ukrainian call, and the Whistleblowers account of that call, which turned out to be false (a fraud?),” Trump argued.

In reality, the whistleblower has been irrelevant since Trump, Mulvaney and Giulaini all confessed that the complaint was correct.

“Once I released the actual call, their entire case fell apart,” Trump falsely claimed, as the rough transcript of the call confirmed the allegations.

“The Democrats must end this Scam now,” Trump pleaded.

[Raw Story]

Trump blasts ‘Never Trump’ Republicans as ‘human scum’

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President Trump on Wednesday excoriated so-called Never Trump Republicans as “human scum” as he seeks to solidify Republican support of him amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry.

He singled out his administration’s special envoy to Ukraine, William Taylor, who a day earlier sat for closed door testimony with those lawmakers the impeachment inquiry and delivered damaging testimony about the White House’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for political purposes.

“The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats,” Trump tweeted. “Watch out for them, they are human scum!” 

“Never Trumper Republican John Bellinger, represents Never Trumper Diplomat Bill Taylor (who I don’t know), in testimony before Congress!” Trump tweeted about 45 minutes later, bemoaning the lack of transparency in the impeachment proceedings thus far.

“It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats,” Trump added. “Nothing good will ever come from them!”


Trump earlier this week complained that Democrats leading the impeachment investigation were interviewing individuals he hadn’t heard of before launching into a tirade against the “Never Trumpers.”

“Don’t forget, many of these people were put there during Obama, during Clinton, during the Never Trump or Bush era,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Monday. “You know, you had a Never Trump or Bush. You have heard of those? Those people might be worse than the Democrats — the Never Trumpers. The good news is they’re dying off fast.”

In the same Cabinet meeting, Trump called on Republicans to fight tougher in the impeachment inquiry.

The president’s tweet came as some of his Republican allies in the House had stormed a closed-door hearing to protest what they argued has been a lack of transparency in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry process.

The furor broke up the deposition of a top Defense Department official who was testifying about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

The fracas also follows testimony from Taylor, who told committees just one day ago that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine to pressure the country to conduct a pair of investigations — one into 2016 election hacking, the other into the family of former Vice President Joe Biden — that might have helped Trump’s reelection campaign next year.

Democrats viewed Taylor’s testimony as particularly damaging for the president, who has repeatedly denied a quid pro quo or any inappropriate interactions with the Ukrainians.

[The Hill]

Trump compares impeachment process to ‘a lynching’

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President Donald Trump compared the impeachment process to “a lynching” on Twitter Tuesday morning.

A check of his previous tweets and public statements showed that this appeared to be the first time he has used the term as president.

“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” he wrote. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”

Criticism of the president’s tweet was swift – from Democrats and some Republicans.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said the word referred to a “painful scourge in our history” and called on Trump to retract his statement.

“We can all disagree on the process, and argue merits. But never should we use terms like “lynching” here. The painful scourge in our history has no comparison to politics, and @realDonaldTrump should retract this immediately. May God help us to return to a better way,” Kinzinger tweeted.

A top Democrat, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said on CNN, “”That is one word no president ought to apply to himself. You know, I’ve studied presidential history quite a bit, and I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything quite like this.”

Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, an African American Democratic congressman, in a reference to the historical connotations of the word, said, “Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Rush tweeted.

But GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters that he agrees with the president calling the impeachment probe a “lynching.”

“This is a lynching in every sense,” Graham said, defending the president. “This is un-American.”

Graham said the president’s use of the word in a tweet this morning is “pretty well accurate” in describing what Democrats in Congress are doing to the president by launching an impeachment probe.

“This is a sham, this a joke,” Graham said of the probe.

“I think lynching can be seen as somebody taking the law into their own hands and out to get somebody for no good reason,” Graham said.

“What does lynching mean? When a mob grabs you, they don’t give you a chance to defend yourself. They don’t tell you what happened to you. They just destroy you,” Graham went on.

“That is exactly what is going on in the U.S. House of Representatives right now,” Graham said.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African American Republican in the Senate, also defended the president — if not his use of the word “lynching.”

“There’s no question that the impeachment process is the closest thing of a political death row trial, so I get his absolute rejection of the process,” Scott said.

“I wouldn’t use the word lynching,” Scott added.

Asked whether he disagreed with those who see the word as racially charged, Scott responded, “Yeah, I do actually disagree. I think the fact of the matter is that you’re talking about something that’s akin to a death row trial from a political perspective, so we should keep our focus on the fact that this is something that is something that has been done behind closed doors,” Scott said.

Trump’s tweet came amid a series of tweets apparently quoting programming on “Fox & Friends,” which included accounts about polling on impeachment and about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While he has previously referred to both the impeachment inquiry and Mueller probe as a “coup,” Tuesday’s comments appear to be the first time Trump has publicly used the word “lynching” to describe the investigations into his potential misconduct in office.

Trump’s allies, however, have used variations of the the word in such a context.

In September, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz referred to Democratic outcry about Trump’s conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky — which sparked the impeachment inquiry — as a “lynch mob.”

On the campaign trail, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and 2020 presidential candidate Julian Castro said the president’s use of the word was “beyond shameful.”

“It’s beyond shameful to use the word ‘lynching’ to describe being held accountable for your actions,” Castro tweeted.

Sen. Kamala Harris, another 2020 presidential candidate, called Trump’s tweet “disgraceful.”

“Lynching is a reprehensible stain on this nation’s history, as is this President. We’ll never erase the pain and trauma of lynching, and to invoke that torture to whitewash your own corruption is disgraceful,” Harris said in a tweet of her own.

George Conway, lawyer and husband to White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and a frequent Trump critic, called him “deranged.”

The president’s reference to “lynching” comes months after the Senate passed a bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime. The bill was introduced by Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker — both now presidential hopefuls — and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act referred to lynching as having “succeeded slavery as the ultimate expression of racism in the United States following Reconstruction.”

“Lynching is not a relic of a painful past — it is a present and pernicious evil that we still have yet to confront,” Booker said in a statement in February.

[ABC News]

Donald Trump’s Televised Cabinet Meeting Was Another Nutty Episode

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oes it even matter any more that, on Monday, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had another televised nutty in the White House? Does it matter more that, in the course of his televised nutty, the president* expressed virulent contempt for the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect, and defend. I mean, I was sitting there when he did it. I had to sit through that awful Roger Corman film of an inaugural address. Did I do that for naught?

Anyway, on Monday, the president* unburdened himself of the following thought-like objects.

On the war on terror:

“I’m the one who did the capturing. I’m the one who knows more about it than you people or fake pundits.”

On the whistleblower:

“I happen to think there probably wasn’t an informant. You know, the informant went to the whistleblower, the whistleblower had, you know, second-and-third-hand information. So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff!”

And then, the piece de resistance, in which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison become operatives of The Deep State…

“You people with this phony emoluments clause.”

I know he burbled on about George Washington and Barack Obama and Netflix and how unprecedented it is that he’s not taking a salary. (Herbert Hoover didn’t, nor did JFK.) But I think I briefly went to another place when he said that thing about the Emoluments Clause. How about the Bill of Rights? How about the powers of Congress? How about the impeachment provisions? What other parts of the Constitution does he consider “phony”?

[Esquire]

Trump suggests Pelosi committed treason, should be ‘immediately impeached’

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President Trump late Sunday suggested that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was guilty of treason and should be “immediately” impeached.

“Nancy Pelosi knew of all of the many Shifty Adam Schiff lies and massive frauds perpetrated upon Congress and the American people, in the form of a fraudulent speech knowingly delivered as a ruthless con, and the illegal meetings with a highly partisan ‘Whistleblower’ & lawyer,” he tweeted.

“This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason. I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly ‘Colluded’ with them, must all be immediately Impeached!”

Members of Congress cannot be impeached, but the Constitution says each House of Congress “may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.” Members may also be censured.

Trump last week ratcheted up attacks targeting House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for exaggerating a partial transcript of the July 25 call between the president and Ukraine’s leader.

At the time, Trump suggested that Schiff should be arrested for treason, which is punishable by death or a prison term.

During a televised congressional hearing, Schiff said that Trump directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “make up dirt on my political opponent” a full “seven times.”

The California Democrat defended his comments amid backlash from Republicans at the time, saying: “Of course, the president never said, ‘If you don’t understand me I’m going to say it seven more times,’ my point is, that’s the message that the Ukraine president was receiving in not so many words.”

It was also reported last week that the whistleblower at the center of a House impeachment inquiry into Trump contacted Schiff’s committee before filing a complaint.

Trump’s attacks late Sunday came shortly after reports emerged of a second whistleblower said to have firsthand knowledge of some of the allegations detailed in the original complaint.

Mark Zaid, an attorney at the firm that represents the whistleblower who filed the original complaint regarding Trump’s interactions with Ukraine, said that he was representing the second whistleblower.

Zaid said the second whistleblower is also an intelligence official and has direct knowledge of some of the allegations detailed in the original complaint.

According to Zaid, the second whistleblower has already spoken to the head of the intelligence community’s internal watchdog office, Michael Atkinson. However, they have not yet spoken with congressional committees investigating Trump’s communications with Ukraine.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham defended Trump after reports surfaced of the second whistleblower and said “it doesn’t matter how many people decide to call themselves whistleblowers about the same telephone call.”

She also said that it “doesn’t change the fact that he has done nothing wrong.”

[The Hill]


Trump publicly urges China to investigate Bidens amid impeachment inquiry

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 President Donald Trump urged another foreign government to probe Joe Biden and his son Thursday, saying the Chinese government should investigate the former vice president and son Hunter Biden over the latter’s involvement with an investment fund that raised money in the country.

“China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

While Trump said he hasn’t requested Chinese President Xi Jinping investigate the Bidens, the public call mirrors the private behavior on which Democrats are partially basing their impeachment inquiry — using the office of the presidency to press a foreign leader to investigate a political rival.

It is “certainly something we can start thinking about, because I’m sure that President Xi does not like being on that kind of scrutiny, where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy,” Trump said Thursday of asking China to probe the Bidens. “He got kicked out of the Navy, all of the sudden he’s getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff.”

The U.S. in the midst of a tense trade war with China. The president, discussing progress on negotiations with Beijing on a possible trade agreement just moments prior to his remarks about the Bidens, told reporters that “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

Chinese officials will be in Washington next week in another attempt to revive talks, Trump said.

Trump, seeking to expand his corruption accusations against the Bidens beyond Ukraine, has in recent days repeatedly accused Hunter Biden of using a 2013 trip on Air Force Two with his father, then the vice president, to procure $1.5 billion from China for a private equity fund he had started.

Prior to Thursday, Trump had not called for an investigation of the matter. The White House declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.

Despite Trump’s accusations, there has been no evidence of corruption on the part of the former vice president or his son. In a statement, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said the president “is flailing and melting down on national television, desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organizations.”

“As Joe Biden forcefully said last night, the defining characteristic of Donald Trump’s presidency is the ongoing abuse of power. What Donald Trump just said on the South Lawn of the White House was this election’s equivalent of his infamous ‘Russia, if you’re listening’ moment from 2016 — a grotesque choice of lies over truth and self over the country,” Bedingfield said.

Trump, during a 2016 campaign rally, encouraged the country to meddle in the 2016 election by trying to access Hillary Clinton’s emails, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation found that within hours of Trump‘s invitation, Russian military intelligence initiated a hack against Clinton’s office. Trump and his allies have said he wasn’t serious when he made the comment.

In pushing back on Trump, Biden’s campaign previously pointed to a fact-check from The Washington Post that found Trump’s claims false while tracing the origins of the $1.5 billion figure to a 2018 book published by conservative author Peter Schweizer.

In addition, Hunter Biden’s spokesman, George Mesires, told NBC News previously that Hunter Biden wasn’t initially an “owner” of the company and has never gotten paid for serving on the board. He said Hunter Biden didn’t acquire an equity interest in the fund until 2017, after his father had left office.

And when he did, he put in only about $420,000 — a 10 percent interest. That puts the total capitalization of the fund at the time at about $4.2 million — a far cry from the $1.5 billion that Trump has alleged.

Trump also said Thursday that he still wants Ukraine to conduct “a major investigation” into Joe and Hunter Biden.

[NBC News]

Reality

Lawfare: Former federal prosecutor and current professor at the University of Alabama School of Law Joyce White Vance concisely yet methodically explained why Trump’s statements constituted a crime.

“Trump just committed a felony violation of law by soliciting something of value in connection with a US election from a foreign government on national TV. 52 U.S. Code § 30121. Violating the law isn’t necessary for Impeachment but it certainly warrants it,” Vance wrote (including a citation to a statute).

She then explained how previously documented accounts of similar behavior render Trump’s conduct here even more culpable than in earlier instances of his requests for foreign assistance.

“The statute requires knowledge your conduct is a crime. After the Mueller investigation, there’s no way Trump was unaware this violates the law. Ukraine/China can you hear me is even worse than Russia, if that’s possible, because it comes from a sitting president,” she wrote.

Trump, Republicans accuse top Dem of orchestrating whistleblower complaint

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The intelligence community employee who has accused President Donald Trump of abusing his office filed his whistleblower complaint after first consulting with an aide to the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a committee spokesman acknowledged Wednesday, touching off a firestorm of criticism from Republicans.

But while President Trump and others accused House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of orchestrating the complaint, Democratic committee aides told NBC News that what happened was rather routine, and no different from the two to three times a month an intelligence agency employee comes to them with concerns.

They said they did what they usually do in that situation: They instructed the future whistleblower to file a formal document with the inspector general, as called for in the law.

“Like other whistleblowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistleblower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the Intelligence Community,” committee spokesman Patrick Boland told NBC News. “This is a regular occurrence, given the committee’s unique oversight role and responsibilities. Consistent with the committee’s longstanding procedures, committee staff appropriately advised the whistleblower to contact an Inspector General and to seek legal counsel.”

The sequence of events was first reported by the New York Times. The future whistleblower, a CIA officer, came to the committee after he had already filed a complaint with the CIA general counsel, and was concerned that the complaint was not being properly handled, Democratic committee aides said.

“At no point did the Committee review or receive the complaint in advance,” Boland said.

Trump, at a news conference, seized on the revelation and made an unsupported allegation that Schiff had helped prepare the complaint.

“He knew long before and helped write it, too. It’s a scam,” the president said.

The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, claimed on Twitter that Schiff “just got caught orchestrating with the whistleblower before the complaint was ever filed. Democrats have rigged this process from the start.”

Boland and a lawyer for the whistleblower denied that Schiff played any role in writing the complaint.

However, Republicans focused on the veracity of a statement Schiff made on MSNBC’s Morning Joe a few days after he publicized the existence of the complaint.

“We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower,” Schiff said. “We would like to, but I’m sure the whistleblower has concerns that he has not been advised, as the law requires, by the inspector general or the Director of National Intelligence, just as to how he is to communicate with Congress.”

A committee aide said Schiff was referring to the committee writ large “officially interviewing the whistleblower,” as distinct from the brief conversation with a staffer. But Sam Stein, the Daily Beast journalist who asked the question, tweeted, “Schiff did appear to lie here in previously saying that his office had not spoken directly with the whistleblower.”

He added, “But if you care more about this stuff than the actual substance of the whistleblower complaint then you’re being a hack.”

Boland noted that the committee did not receive a copy of the complaint from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence until the night before the acting director of national intelligence’s testimony, more than three weeks after the legal deadline by which the committee should have received the complaint.

“The whistleblower should be commended for acting appropriately and lawfully throughout every step of the process,” he added. “The committee expects that they will be fully protected, despite the President’s threats. Only through their courage did these facts about the President’s abuse of power come to light. The committee encourages all whistleblowers to come forward and seek advice on how to make disclosures of serious or flagrant wrongdoing. The committee — and the nation — rely on brave members of the Intelligence Community to raise the alarm and avail themselves of established channels.”

Schiff does not know the identity of the complainant, the committee aides said, adding that the whistleblower passed on only a vague account of his or her concerns. They would not comment on whether Schiff knew they involved a Trump phone call with the Ukrainian president.

But one result of the heads up was that Schiff, alone among members of Congress, knew there was something important when the inspector general of the Intelligence Community notified the House and Senate intelligence committees that an “urgent concern” complaint was being withheld from them on legal grounds. On September 13, a Friday night, Schiff announced without warning that he was issuing a subpoena for the complaint, and suggested the complaint was being withheld to protect the president. Other Democrats did not appear to know what he knew.

The committee aides added that the bulk of the whistleblower’s complaint was marked unclassified, and that he therefore did not violate the whistleblower law that prohibits intelligence employees from conveying classified information to Congress without going through procedures, including filing a complaint with an inspector general.

A source close to the whistleblower’s legal team said there was no violation, and did not dispute the sequence of events as reported in the New York Times and confirmed by committee aides.

When the whistleblower first had a colleague convey his or her concerns in very general terms to the CIA’s general counsel, the CIA’s counsel briefed the White House Counsel’s Office about the complaint, a person familiar with the matter said. When the whistleblower learned about that, he became concerned the complaint was being swept aside, the New York Times reported.

“The intelligence community whistleblower followed the advice of legal counsel from the beginning,” Andrew Bakaj, lead counsel for the whistleblower, said. “The laws and processes have been followed.”

[NBC News]

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