Only three times in the history of the American republic has Congress initiated public testimony that could result in the removal of the president by impeachment. The tally will rise to four on Wednesday.
Related: Lights, camera, impeachment: TV phase of inquiry carries pluses and pitfalls
Continue reading...Dara Khosrowshahi scrambles after saying Saudi Arabia’s murder of dissident was a ‘mistake’ similar to self-driving car accident
Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, has attempted to limit the damage after calling the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi “a mistake” similar to a fatal accident that occurred during tests of his company’s self-driving car.
Related: The Killing in the Consulate by Jonathan Rugman review – a dark fable of unaccountable power
Continue reading...About 500 or 600 US troops will remain in Syria to counter Islamic State, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday.
Related: 'Secure the oil': Trump's Syria strategy leaves Pentagon perplexed
Continue reading...After the massacre of a US family, the president offered to help ‘cleaning out these monsters’ but previous interventions have brought little peace
After nine members of a Mormon family with US/Mexican citizenship were slaughtered by gunmen, Donald Trump reacted by urging his Mexican counterpart to let him sort out the drug cartels.
“If Mexico needs or requests help cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” the US president tweeted on Tuesday, after news broke of the massacre – the latest in a series of extremely violent events across the country.
Continue reading...Congress hears Mulvaney approved Trump-Zelenskiy meeting on condition Ukraine announced investigations tied to Joe Biden
Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney approved a White House meeting with the president for the Ukrainian president on condition Ukraine announced investigations tied to Trump’s political rival Joe Biden, according to testimony released on Friday.
Related: Trump impeachment inquiry: Mick Mulvaney implicated in released transcripts – live
Continue reading...French president says in interview that Europe is in danger of disappearing geopolitically
Emmanuel Macron has said Nato is in the throes of “brain death” and European countries can no longer rely on the US to defend its allies, drawing criticism from both the US and Germany.
“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of Nato,” the French president told the Economist in an interview. “You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its Nato allies. None. You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another Nato ally, Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake.”
Continue reading...EU envoy acknowledges in updated testimony he told Ukraine it would likely not receive aid unless it announced investigations into Trump’s rivals
Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell appears to have bulldozed directly through protocol by forecasting, before the articles of impeachment have even been drafted in the House and Trump put on trial in the Senate, that the president will be acquitted.
“If it were today, I don’t think there’s any question — it would not lead to a removal,” @SenateMajLdr McConnell says of a potential impeachment trial in the Senate.
/2 McConnell: “I’m pretty sure I know how it’s going to end.” Says Trump will be acquitted by Senate like Clinton & Andrew Johnson
Sondland was asked, with respect to the “demands” made by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani to investigate the 2016 election and Burisma, if “those conditions would have to be complied with prior to getting a meeting.”
Continue reading...Experts warn of dangerous consequences as nuclear deal continues to unravel
Iran has announced a tenfold increase in enriched uranium production as Tehran backs away from its nuclear deal with the west.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, said enriched uranium production was now at 5kg per day, up from 450g two months ago. The announcement coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Iranian takeover of the US embassy.
Continue reading...Tim Morrison is at closed-door testimony following last night’s reports that the official is stepping down from his post at the White House
Nancy Pelosi rather unusually presided over the House herself this morning as members began to debate the impeachment resolution.
.@SpeakerPelosi taking the unusual step of presiding over the House herself as they begin debate on the procedures for the impeachment inquiry going forward
Tim Morrison, the national security council official currently testifying behind closed doors in the impeachment inquiry, reportedly intends to confirm Bill Taylor’s account that the White House held up Ukraine’s military assistance to push for public announcements of investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 election.
The Washington Post reports:
Morrison is expected to tell impeachment investigators on Thursday that the account offered by Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr., is accurate, particularly that Morrison alerted him to the president’s and his deputies’ push to withhold security aid and a meeting with the Ukrainian president until Ukraine announced an investigation of the Bidens and 2016 election interference, the person said on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Morrison will also say that he did not necessarily view the president’s demands as improper or illegal, but rather problematic for U.S. policy in supporting an ally in the region, the person said.
House committees leading the impeachment inquiry reportedly intend to call Donald Trump’s former national security adviser
The interior department is grounding its entire fleet of drones due to security concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported.
With more than 800 aerial drones, the department has one of the largest fleets in the federal government.
US officials worry that the country’s reliance on Chinese drones may be putting critical US infrastructure at risk. They are concerned the drones may be sending information back to the Chinese government or hackers elsewhere to use for cyberattacks or other offenses.
Hello, Kari Paul here in San Francisco, taking over the blog for the next few hours. More news to come shortly.
Continue reading...State department aide makes revelation in testimony, while Russia envoy nominee John Sullivan grilled at confirmation hearing
The White House blocked the US state department from issuing a statement condemning Russia for seizing Ukrainian military vessels, according to a state department official, in the latest example of the strain the Trump administration is under in pursuing conflicting policies towards the two countries.
Related: Unravelling Rudolph Giuliani’s labyrinthine ties to Ukraine
Continue reading...Army lieutenant colonel to describe his concerns Trump’s Biden plot was undermining US foreign policy in Ukraine
In his opening statement before congressional impeachment investigators on Tuesday, Lt Col Alexander S Vindman planned to describe his concerns that Donald Trump’s plot to undermine Joe Biden was undermining US foreign policy in Ukraine.
Related: Army officer to testify Trump-Zelenskiy call 'raised internal alarm'
Continue reading...Donald Trump makes statement following US raid in north-west Syria
President Donald Trump has just started speaking. He says last night the US brought the “world’s greatest terrorist leader to justice”. “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” he says.
President Trump is about to give a press conference at the White House. You can follow it live above or on YouTube here.
Continue reading...Political tensions over an intensifying impeachment inquiry reached fever pitch on Wednesday as Republicans ‘stormed’ a closed-door committee hearing on Capitol Hill disrupting a crucial deposition related to the Ukraine controversy.
The chaos and confusion temporarily shut down the proceedings before the three House committees leading the impeachment inquiry where Laura Cooper, a top Pentagon official who oversees Ukraine policy, was preparing to testify
Donald Trump has said he will lift the economic sanctions imposed on Turkey after its government informed the US that it would make the ceasefire in Syria ‘permanent’. Claiming success at the US-brokered effort, the US president said on Wednesday that ‘this was an outcome created by us’
The Ukraine diplomat said Trump put pressure on Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and gave the most detailed account so far
The US’s top diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, gave damning evidence on Tuesday to congressional committees in Washington investigating Donald Trump. Taylor told impeachment inquiry hearings that Trump had explicitly put pressure on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate former vice-president Joe Biden – Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2020 election – and to pursue the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election on the side of Hillary Clinton. Taylor released his version of events in a 15-page document, in the most detailed account of the scandal so far.
Related: US envoy says Trump used military aid to push Ukraine to investigate Biden
Continue reading...Senior Trump administration officials were on Sunday scrambling to defend the president from escalating domestic and foreign policy scandals, ranging from impeachment proceedings in Washington to the US troop withdrawal in northern Syria.
Related: 'Meltdown': Donald Trump's week of intense political peril
Continue reading...Evacuation part of US-brokered ceasefire, as Nancy Pelosi leads congressional visit to region
Kurdish officials say their fighters have evacuated Ras al-Ayn, giving Turkey and its allies control of one of the border cities that has borne the brunt of fighting since Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from north-eastern Syria.
The Turkish defence ministry said a convoy of 86 vehicles left the city on Sunday afternoon carrying fighters from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Front (SDF) and wounded civilians south to cities beyond the 20-mile buffer zone that Turkey is seeking to clear along its border with Syria.
Continue reading...Mexico’s foreign minister said on Saturday that the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Donald Trump had agreed to take swift action to stem the flow of illegal weapons from the US into Mexico.
Related: 'We do not want war': Mexico president defends release of El Chapo’s son
Continue reading...Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn talk about their whirlwind White House trip, with Anne Sacoolas, the woman who killed their son, in the next room
When the grieving parents of British teenager Harry Dunn arrived in New York earlier this week, their fight for justice for their dead son quickly became a whirlwind of interviews. Their press tour took a strange turn on Tuesday, however, when family adviser Radd Seiger received an unexpected invitation to Washington DC.
“Radd, who’s been looking after us, has a phone call from the White House saying: ‘Could you please come to the White House as soon as possible?’” Tim Dunn, Harry’s father, said.
Continue reading...