Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The state department’s inspector general has requested an urgent briefing related to documents on Ukraine with congressional staff members, according to multiple reports.
The inspector general’s unusual request followed secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s assertions that House democrats were trying to “bully” officials into testifying and that the democrats’ schedule for depositions related to the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry was “not feasible”.
Secretary of state signals he will not comply with demands to hear depositions but witness are still set to give evidence, House says
Donald Trump’s administration has sought to defy congressional demands to hear depositions from senior officials, in the first major battle of a rapidly growing impeachment inquiry.
On Tuesday, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, dismissed summonses from Democratic committee chairmen in the House of Representatives for five current and former state department officials to testify on the president’s attempts to push Ukraine to dig up dirt on his leading political rival.
In non-impeachment news, representative Chris Collins, a Republican of New York, has reportedly sent a letter of resignation to Nancy Pelosi a day before he was expected to plead guilty to insider trading charges.
Collins, 69, allegedly tipped off his son to confidential information about an Australian biotechnology company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, that he learned as a member of its board. Collins and several others used the information to avoid more than $700,000 in losses, according to prosecutors.
He is scheduled to change his plea Tuesday afternoon in a Manhattan federal court. ...
In addition to calling Trump a “corrupt human tornado,” Hillary Clinton also reacted to reports that the State Department is still investigating the email practices of her employees while she was secretary of state.
As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.
In virtually all of the cases, potentially sensitive information, now recategorized as ‘classified,’ was sent to Clinton’s unsecure inbox.
Donald Trump, already facing impeachment, has provoked fresh outrage by suggesting one of his main political adversaries should be arrested for “treason”.
Whistleblower’s attorney says president’s demands to identify their client has prompted safety concerns
Lawyers acting for the whistleblower at the centre of the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s attempts to solicit foreign help for his re-election campaign have warned that their client’s personal safety is in danger partly as a result of the president’s remarks.
Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the unnamed intelligence official who sounded the alarm on Trump’s activities relating to Ukraine, expressed fears on Sunday that the whistleblower could be put “in harm’s way” were his or her identity made public. In a letter to the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, Bakaj points directly at Trump’s aggressive statements that he said prompted “concerns for our client’s safety”.
Kurt Volker departs as further reports emerge of White House efforts to cut access to Trump calls to Russia and Saudi Arabia
Kurt Volker, the US special envoy for Ukraine, has resigned, according to a US official, becoming the first casualty in the rapidly growing impeachment crisis surrounding Donald Trump.
Volker is due to appear before Congress next week and was mentioned in the whistleblower complaint as helping Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy “navigate” Trump’s demands.
Democrats in the House of Representatives are moving forward with an impeachment inquiry to explore whether the US president should effectively be put on trial by the US Congress and, if convicted, removed from office.
News of US pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskiy has sparked fears among reformers, but on the streets it is seen as an American affair
The revelations that Donald Trump attempted to pressure Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden’s family have reverberated through civil society and political circles in Kyiv, prompting some to ask if the United States can be viewed as a trustworthy ally in the country’s attempts to reform and stave off pressure from Russia.
Members of Ukraine’s civil society and veterans communities on Thursday complained about the threat of withholding military funding and US political support to score points in domestic US politics.
It’s a blockbuster that arrived too late for summer, but with the president obsessing, Congress investigating and main street America processing, the buzz around a whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump released early on Thursday appears likely only to grow.
The acting director of national intelligence said he believed both the whistleblower who filed the complaint against Donald Trump and the inspector general who handled it ‘acted in good faith’. Joseph Maguire told members of the House intelligence committee: ‘I have every reason to believe that they have done everything by the book.’ Maguire, who was appointed last month to succeed outgoing director Dan Coats, also said he believed he handled the whistleblower’s complaint ‘in full compliance with the law at all times’ adding that he was committed to doing so
Donald Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to work with the US attorney general to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, a damning White House memo revealed on Wednesday, raising the stakes in an acrimonious and polarising impeachment inquiry.
Democrats said the US president’s conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskiy detailed in the five-page rough “transcript” was a devastating betrayal of his country that merited their investigation, while Republicans claimed it showed no quid pro quo and offered complete vindication.
Sitting down in front of cameras at the UN, Zelenskiy looked miserable and Trump rambled about his achievements
In this new screwball comedy, an American reality show host and a Ukrainian TV comedian somehow find themselves elected president and almost get away with it – until a seemingly routine phone call ends up determining the fate of both their nations.
It is a script that has bypassed the big screen to go straight to reality in 2019, and it was playing on Wednesday in both Washington and New York.
Democratic and republican lawmakers are expressing concern after reviewing whistleblower complaint
It appears that members of the Senate intelligence committee have reviewed the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower complaint.
Chuck Schumer after reading whistleblower complaint: “Having read the documents in there, I'm even more worried about what happened than I was when I read the memorandum of the conversation. There are so many facts that have to be examined. It’s very troubling.”
SASSE after reading the whistleblower complaint: “Really troubling things here. Republicans ought not just circle the wagons, and democrats ought not have been using words like impeachment before they knew anything about the actual substance.”
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has introduced a resolution to get congress to officially avow that it “disapproves” speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry announcement yesterday.
HAPPENING NOW→ I'm introducing a privileged resolution for the House to vote on.
"The House of Reps disapproves of the actions of Speaker Pelosi to initiate an impeachment inquiry against the duly elected President of the US, @realDonaldTrump."
HAPPENING NOW→ I'm introducing a privileged resolution for the House to vote on.
"The House of Reps disapproves of the actions of Speaker Pelosi to initiate an impeachment inquiry against the duly elected President of the US, @realDonaldTrump."
Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters on Wednesday that he did not feel pressured by Donald Trump to investigate Joe Biden. ‘I think you read everything,’ the Ukrainian president said, referencing the White House memo on his phone call with the US president. In the same meeting, Trump made reference to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency, and asserted that Hillary Clinton’s emails may be located in Ukraine
The White House on Wednesday released a five-page summary of a 30-minute call between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that lies at the heart of the growing impeachment process.
Adam Schiff has compared Donald Trump’s communications with Ukraine, as reported in a White House memo, to the actions of a mobster. The House intelligence committee chair said the US president's conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart represented a 'classic, mafia-like shakedown' of a foreign leader. 'This is how a mafia boss talks,' Schiff said. 'And it’s clear that the Ukraine president understands exactly what is expected of him'
Donald Trump has said he put ‘absolutely no pressure’ on Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. He told reporters after the White House released notes of the phone call he had with the president of Ukraine that the impeachment inquiry was a 'disgraceful thing’. He added: ‘The way you built up that call it was going to be the call from hell. It turned out to be a nothing call, other than a lot of people said I never knew you could be so nice’
For decades there has been a “catch me if you can” quality about Donald Trump, skipping from casino bankruptcies to fraudulent universities to porn actor payoffs. As president, Trump has at times seemed likewise untouchable, even as the number of his discarded former allies piles up and his political capital pays out.
But documentation has never before emerged, as it did on Wednesday, of Trump as US president asking a foreign leader for dirt on his political opponents. And there’s reason to believe that much more, and worse, is about to come out.
As Democratic lawmakers plan to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power, the novice Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, must run a gauntlet of US partisan pressure that he has sought desperately to avoid.
Donald Trump says growing calls for his impeachment are 'nonsense' after it emerged he withheld nearly $400m in aid to Ukraine.
The US president ordered staff to withhold the aid before demanding Ukraine’s president investigate Joe Biden and his son, it emerged on Tuesday. Trump said the controversial phone call, with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had been 'perfect'