Sarah Sanders, the former White House press secretary who admitted to Robert Mueller that she lied to reporters, told the New York Times: “I don’t like being called a liar.”
Related: Trump impeachment: Republicans dig in as hopes of bipartisan support dashed
Continue reading...Congressional Republicans dug deep in defense of Donald Trump over the weekend, frustrating Democratic hopes that the impeachment inquiry would build bipartisan support following weeks of testimony laying out how Trump attempted to extract a political “favor” from Ukraine in exchange for official acts.
Related: Trump impeachment: Schiff calls on Bolton to testify and slams Republicans
Continue reading...House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff blasted former national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday, for failing to appear for testimony in the impeachment inquiry while teasing a forthcoming memoir.
Related: Not just the facts: Republicans' top six impeachment falsehoods
Continue reading...The revelation of an email trove in which the White House aide trafficked in far-right ideas provoked outrage but little surprise
The extraordinary email leak came with a sense of inevitability. The senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist articles and books in emails to a writer at Breitbart, who after leaving the hard-right website leaked 900 messages to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
It was a discovery that would end the careers of most political figures. But among calls for Miller’s resignation, a common theme emerged: a lack of surprise that the architect of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda endorsed white supremacist views.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...President sounded off on public hearings on Fox & Friends, praised Giuliani as ‘one of the great crime fighters’ and called Pelosi ‘crazy as a bedbug’
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.’
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...Protesters interrupted a speech at a historically black college, as the 2020 hopeful struggles to attract essential support
Elizabeth Warren was only a couple of minutes into her prepared remarks celebrating the history of black female protesters when modern-day protesters, many of them also black women, decided to cut her off.
Just as the Massachusetts senator was about to launch into her reflections on the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike of 1881, stomping feet and shouting were heard from the corner of Clark Atlanta University’s gymnasium. Soon, Warren’s prepared speech was eclipsed by cheers of “Our children, our choice!” and “We will be heard!”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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:
Continue reading...Former expert on Russia attacked debunked conspiracy theory used to defend Trump against allegations of bribery
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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...Joe Biden boasted about his support among African American voters during the fifth Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta on Wednesday. 'I come out of the black community in terms of my support,' Biden said and listed 'the only black African American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate' as one of his endorsements, at which the candidate and senator Kamala Harris threw her hands in the air, laughing: 'Nope. That's not true. The other one is here.'
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...A surging Pete Buttigieg avoided major criticism while Tulsi Gabbard reinforced her outsider status in Atlanta debate
Some of the candidates used the explosive congressional testimony from the ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, earlier in the day as a launchpad to renew calls for Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...The US ambassador to the EU has delivered bombshell testimony that deals serious blows to Trump’s defense of his role on Ukraine
Nunes is up first. “Once again the Democrats have seen the preposterous failure of their conspiracy theory,” he says.
Nunes notes that Democrats have said Sondland’s other two amigos – Rick Perry and Kurt Volker – have left him behind.
And a late-stage zinger from Sondland. Krishnamoorthi notes he had been referred to by NSC officials as “the Gordon problem.”
“That’s what my wife calls me,” Sondland said, to ready laughter. “Maybe they’re talking. Should I be worried?”
Continue reading...Even Republicans are predicting impeachment is looming for Trump as Sondland admits: ‘We followed the president’s orders’
Here are five key takeaways from the fourth day of public impeachment hearings against Donald Trump:
Continue reading...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
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