Trump’s top Russia official to testify in impeachment inquiry after stepping down – live

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.

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John Bolton reportedly asked to sit for impeachment deposition – live news

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.

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White House blocked effort to condemn Russia for seizing Ukraine ships, Congress told

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

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Alexander Vindman’s Trump-Ukraine testimony: five key takeaways

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'

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Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed, says Donald Trump – live updates

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.

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Republicans disrupt closed-door Trump impeachment inquiry hearing – video

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

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Trump: Syria ceasefire will be ‘permanent’ – video

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’

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What Bill Taylor’s impeachment inquiry testimony tells 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

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Mick Mulvaney seeks Trump damage control over impeachment and more

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

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Kurdish fighters leave Syrian border town, giving Turkey control

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.

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Obrador and Trump speak in aftermath of shootout over El Chapo’s son

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

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‘We were not impressed’: Harry Dunn’s parents on their bizarre day with Trump

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.

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Rick Perry: Trump energy secretary resigns amid Ukraine scandal – live

Trump confirmed Perry is resigning, and said that his replacement will be announced ‘very shortly’

The mayor of Doral, Florida, a small town outside of Miami, was taken by surprise by the White House’s announcement that the G7 summit would be held at one of Trump’s own resorts there, the Washington Post reports.

The announcement, a clear example of using the power of the presidency to benefit Trump’s private interests, has sparked anger and widespread criticism.

I just talked to the mayor of Doral — who now needs to plan to host 8 world leaders and thousands of diplomats.
He learned this when we did, by watching Mulvaney on TV. He still hasn’t gotten a call from the White House. https://t.co/7A9AekUhoy

In his final hours, Elijah Cummings, the son of sharecroppers who became an influential Democratic congressman from Baltimore, was still working to help immigrants with chronic medical conditions.

That’s what members of his staff told Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, she tweeted today.

As I was paying my respects to our forever Chairman, his staff told me that in his final hours he signed subpoenas to USCIS and ICE, pursuing justice for immigrants in my district & across the country with chronic medical conditions. A man of his word every moment of his life. pic.twitter.com/igzUPl1yPF

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Three US diplomats held near Russian test site where mystery blast killed five

  • Russian foreign ministry says trio ‘obviously got lost’
  • August explosion caused radiation levels to surge

Three American diplomats were briefly detained in Russia near the military test site where a mysterious explosion released radiation in August, several Russia state news agencies have reported.

The US embassy has confirmed the incident, the Interfax news service reported, but said the three diplomats had filed the proper paperwork to travel in the area.

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Trump says Boris Johnson asked him to set up Dunn family meeting – video

US president Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his meeting with the Dunn family, whose son Harry died in a road collision with a US intelligence officer's wife, was 'beautiful in a certain way', but sad. He added that Anne Sacoolas said she was driving on the wrong side of the road before the crash

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‘I said do the right thing’: Harry Dunn’s mother describes meeting Trump – video

The mother of Harry Dunn, a British teenager who died in a collision with a car driven on the wrong side of the road by Anne Sacoolas, an American woman who claimed diplomatic immunity, said she asked Donald Trump to ‘do the right thing’ when they met at the White House on Tuesday. The US president told Dunn’s parents that Sacoolas was in an adjoining room but they turned down the offer to meet her

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Trump-Ukraine: John Bolton ‘sounded alarm about Giuliani’s actions’

The former US national security adviser, John Bolton, was reportedly so alarmed at a back-channel effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Donald Trump’s political rivals that he told a senior aide to report it to White House lawyers.

The revelation of Bolton’s involvement in the effort to block a shadow foreign policy aimed at Trump’s political benefit emerged from congressional testimony given by his former aide, Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert in the White House.

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Trump asks Turkey for ceasefire and orders sanctions as violence escalates

  • President freezes negotiations on $100bn trade deal
  • Trump vows to ‘swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy’

Donald Trump spoke directly to the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdoğan, on Monday to demand an immediate ceasefire in Syria while announcing a series of punishments for Ankara that critics saw as an attempt to save face.

The US president’s conversation with Erdoğan was revealed by the vice-president, Mike Pence, who said he would soon be travelling to the Middle East. “The United States of America did not give a green light for Turkey to invade Syria,” Pence insisted to reporters at the White House.

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Trump and Syria: the worst week for US foreign policy since the Iraq invasion?

A close ally is abandoned, and Isis is regrouping. The speed of the unravelling is breathtaking

In the week since Donald Trump’s fateful phone conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the US has entirely abandoned the Kurds, its most effective allies in the Middle East, and with them a Syria strategy that was five years in the making.

The Islamic State flag has been raised once more and the last vestige of US credibility as a reliable partner lies crushed under Turkish tank tracks. It has arguably been the worst seven days for US foreign policy since the invasion of Iraq.

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Kurds reach deal with Damascus in face of Turkish offensive

Agreement to hand over border towns comes after more than 700 Isis affiliates escape camp

More than 700 people with links to Islamic State have escaped from a detention camp in north-east Syria, as the Kurdish-led forces in control of the area reached a deal with the Assad regime to stave off a bloody five-day-old Turkish assault.

Kurdish fighters controlling the region would surrender the border towns of Manbij and Kobane to Damascus in a deal brokered by Russia, officials said on Sunday night.

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