Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Vindman, Yovanovitch and Hill showed an unshaken faith in America. But Republicans could not resist cynical innuendo on ‘dual loyalties’
Partisan rancour, smoke and mirrors and damning evidence about the misconduct of the US president – all these were expected from this week’s impeachment inquiry hearings and were provided in spades.
But a narrative that caught many by surprise was the role played by immigrants, the power of their origin stories and their unshaken faith in the ideal of America, even in the “build the wall” era of Donald Trump. At seven hearings over five days, spread over the course of two weeks, this was not only a congressional investigation; it was a nation holding a mirror up to itself.
Cache published under FOI act show paper trail between Trump’s lawyer and secretary of state to enable Ukraine smear plot
Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in contact with secretary of state Mike Pompeo in the months before the US ambassador to Ukraine was abruptly recalled, according to a cache of documents released by on Friday.
The state department released the documents to the group American Oversight in response to a freedom of information lawsuit. They show that Pompeo talked with Giuliani on 26 March and 29 March.
Joe Biden had harsh words for his former Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, who has emerged as one of the president’s most prominenet defenders against the House impeachment inquiry.
“Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life,” Biden in a CNN interview. “I say Lindsey, I just -- I’m just embarrassed by what you’re doing, for you. I mean, my Lord.”
Biden tells @donlemon he's "embarrassed by" Graham's actions after senator asks Pompeo to turn over docs related to Hunter and Ukraine
"Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life," Biden says, adding Trump is "holding power" over him pic.twitter.com/sjNjQV7Ogp
John Hendrickson, who wrote the incredible Atlantic article on Joe Biden’s history with stuttering, said in an MSNBC interview that he has received dozens of emails thanking him for exploring the topic.
Hendrickson, who also stutters, said it was his “nightmare” to be doing a television interview and acknowledged he admired Biden for for participating in presidential debates despite his history of stuttering. “I admire his courage,” Hendrickson said.
.@JohnGHendy thought this conversation would be his nightmare. He explained to me why his new piece in @TheAtlantic about how Joe Biden is handling the challenge of stuttering is so personal to him. Watch this: pic.twitter.com/lNlqpovnJI
Maybe you’ve heard Biden talk about his boyhood stutter. A non-stutterer might not notice when he appears to get caught on words as an adult, because he usually maneuvers out of those moments quickly and expertly. But on other occasions, like [the July debate] in Detroit, Biden’s lingering stutter is hard to miss. He stutters—if slightly—on several sounds as we sit across from each other in his office. Before addressing the debate specifically, I mention what I’ve just heard. ‘I want to ask you, as, you know, a … stutterer to, uh, to a … stutterer. When you were … talking a couple minutes ago, it, it seemed to … my ear, my eye … did you have … trouble on s? Or on … m?’
Biden looks down. He pivots to the distant past, telling me that the letter s was hard when he was a kid. ‘But, you know, I haven’t stuttered in so long that it’s hhhhard for me to remember the specific—’ He pauses. ‘What I do remember is the feeling.’
Donald Trump told Fox & Friends he wants to go on trial, which means he would like to be impeached. The president complained that Republicans couldn’t call witnesses during the House impeachment hearings, and suggested a trial would enable him to quiz the whistleblower and Adam Schiff, House intelligence committee chair
The fifth day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump saw powerful testimony from Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official and former top Russia expert in the White House, and David Holmes, a state department aide in Kyiv.
Both spoke of Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, as Holmes described a cellphone conversation in which he overheard Trump ask Sondland about 'investigations' and heard Sondland tell Trump the Ukrainians had agreed to them.
The former National Security Council official provided some of the most explosive testimony yet
The fifth, and possibly final, day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump was one of the most explosive. Here are five key takeaways:
Republicans loyal to Donald Trump must stop pushing the “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election because it plays into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the White House’s former top expert on Russia has told the impeachment inquiry in dramatic testimony.
British-born Fiona Hill, appearing in Washington on Thursday, attacked a debunked conspiracy theory used by Republicans to defend the US president against allegations that he sought to bribe Ukraine for his own political gain.
A former White House official has criticised politicians for advancing discredited conspiracy theories about Ukraine during impeachment hearings.
'I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimise an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine – not Russia – attacked us in 2016,' said Fiona Hill in her opening statement.
Republicans have used the hearings to push the idea that Donald Trump was rightly suspicious of Ukraine because of allegations it attempted to meddle in the 2016 election – a widely debunked claim pushed by some of Trump's closest advisers including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
During the impeachment hearing into Donald Trump, Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, told lawmakers on Wednesday that her staff had received an email on 25 July from the state department saying that Ukraine’s embassy and the House foreign affairs committee were asking about military aid.
25 July was the day of a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president in which Trump raised the issues of an investigation into Joe Biden, alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election and about aid
Palestinians are surrounded by settlers and abandoned by the west, but this latest setback will only boost support for their cause
The day before US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the United States now considers the Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be legal, I accompanied an American group of writers on a tour of the settlements around Ramallah.
It was organised by Breaking the Silence, a group formed by Israeli veterans who oppose the occupation. Yehuda Shaul, the co-founder of the organisation, led the tour. He said that, from 1967 on, the settlement project was state-driven, neither prompted nor led by the settlers. Since then, the US position had been that settlement building in the occupied territories was contrary to international law. And yet no material action has ever been taken by any US administration to force Israel to stop building – except for one moment, in 1991, when president George Bush refused to provide a guarantee for $10bn in loans to Israel over settlement expansion. So what is new about Trump’s announcement?
Day four of impeachment hearings saw the most explosive testimony so far as Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, claimed Donald Trump had directed a quid-pro-quo with Ukraine through his personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani.
Sondland asserted that an Oval Office meeting with Trump was conditional on Ukraine announcing investigations into Burisma, a gas company linked to the son of the former vice-president Joe Biden, and a widely discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine planted evidence on a server of the Democratic party to show that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
'We followed the president’s orders,' said the Trump appointee in remarks that sent shockwaves through Washington and elicited a furious response from the president.
Democratic presidential contenders backed the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry during the fifth televised debate on Wednesday, saying his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate the former vice-president Joe Biden was an example of his administration's corruption. The debate came hours after a senior US diplomat gave explosive testimony that directly implicated the president in a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine
New evidence from impeachment inquiry witness Laura Cooper knocks down key pillar of Trump’s defence
Ukraine raised concerns about a hold on military aid on the same day as Donald Trump’s infamous phone call with its president, a Pentagon official told the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.
The evidence from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defence, knocks down a key pillar of the White House’s defence: that Ukraine was unaware of the suspension of nearly $400m in security assistance until a much later date.
The EU envoy was emphatic that the shakedown scheme to hold back Ukrainian aid involved Trump and his top deputies
When Gordon Sondland walked into the congressional impeachment hearing shortly after 9am, reports were circulating that the Trump administration and the Republican party was going to throw him under the bus for his part the Ukraine scandal, painting him as a hotelier turned diplomat who went rogue.
The US president has responded to shocking testimony from Gordon Sondland on the existence of a quid pro quo by saying that he wanted ‘nothing’ from Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn on Wednesday, Trump added that the impeachment hearings should be brought to an end.
Trump’s comments came after Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, said that he was forced to work with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, against his will, and criticised the White House and state department for failing to provide records
Ambassador to EU testifies as House impeachment hearing
Sondland: ‘We followed the president’s orders’
A star witness at the impeachment inquiry has delivered a devastating blow to Donald Trump, testifying about the existence of a quid pro quo with Ukraine and insisting: “We followed the president’s orders.”
Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, stunned Washington with bombshell evidence that blew a hole in the White House’s defences, implicated numerous senior officials and left the US president facing probable impeachment.
A star witness at the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump has testified to the existence of a quid pro quo with Ukraine and insisted: 'We followed the president’s orders.' Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, said in bombshell evidence that he was forced to work with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, against his will, and criticised the White House and state department for failing to provide records.
'Everyone was in the loop,' Sondland testified in opening remarks. 'It was no secret'
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said everyone in Ukraine is ‘tired about Burisma’, the company at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. The inquiry is trying to establish whether the US president pressured Ukraine to open an investigation into Hunter Biden, son of former US vice-president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s largest gas conglomerates
Sondland will face questions on Wednesday over a key phone call with Trump at a restaurant in Ukraine
Donald Trump’s own words will take centre stage at the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday when his ambassador to the European Union faces questions about a phone call with the US president in a Ukrainian restaurant.
Gordon Sondland is the witness who most alarms officials at the White House, according to US media reports, fueling speculation that the ambassador could plead the fifth amendment to protect himself from self-incrimination.