Trump Corruption

From the editorial board of the Washington Post: Text messages among U.S. diplomats and a Ukrainian official released by House committees definitively show that not only did the Trump administration seek to extract Ukrainian promises of political probes in exchange for a summit meeting, but also they spent weeks negotiating the deal both before and after the Trump-Zelensky phone call. …

The New York Times reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defiantly insisted on Saturday in Greece that the Trump administration was right to ask Ukrainian officials to investigate claims of election interference in the 2016 American presidential campaign, bolstering a widely debunked conspiracy theory that had already been dismissed by his own diplomatic envoy. In comments to journalists in Athens, …

The Washington Post reports: An attorney for the whistleblower who raised the alarm about President Trump’s communications with Ukraine said Sunday that “multiple” whistleblowers have come forward. The news, which comes as House Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry and are subpoenaing the White House for documents, adds to the deepening political crisis facing the president. Mark Zaid, who also …

Axios reports: President Trump told House Republicans that he made his now infamous phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry — a call Trump claimed he didn’t even want to make. Trump made these comments during a conference call with House members on Friday, according to 3 sources on the call. Per …

Reuters reports: US President Donald Trump on Sunday opened a new front in the impeachment battle that threatens his administration, blasting a prominent member of his party for criticizing his push to get foreign nations to probe a leading Democratic rival. The Republican president, who launched a stream of invective at Democrats and the media this week as an impeachment …

This thing just continues to snowball: A second intelligence official who was alarmed by President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is weighing whether to file his own formal whistle-blower complaint and testify to Congress, according to two people briefed on the matter. The official has more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower, whose complaint that Mr. Trump was …

The New York Times reports: Gordon D. Sondland, the blunt-spoken hotelier who is President Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, was boasting on Ukrainian television that Mr. Trump had honored him with a “special assignment” — “overseeing” relations between the two countries “at the highest levels.” At the time, his television remarks might have been the kind of diplomatic bluster …

The Washington Post reports: The Treasury Department’s acting inspector general has opened a review into whether the Trump administration acted improperly during its ongoing fight with House Democrats over releasing President Trump’s tax returns. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to comply with a request from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) for six years of …

USA Today reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo failed to comply with a Friday deadline to turn over Ukraine-related documents to House Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, according to an official on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The State Department’s delay in producing reams of documents related to the agency’s dealings with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal …

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump has ordered a substantial reduction in the staff of the National Security Council, according to five people familiar with the plans, as the White House confronts an impeachment inquiry touched off by a whistle-blower complaint related to the agency’s work. Some of the people described the staff cuts as part of a White House effort …

Mediaite reports: President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told Fox News on Friday that his mission is to “disrupt the world” while defending his interactions with Ukrainian officials. “My mission is to disrupt the world,” Giuliani said when asked by Fox News host Martha MacCallum what his personal goal is as the president’s personal lawyer. He continued: “My mission is …

Vice News reports: House Democrats slapped the White House with a subpoena for documents in their impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s Ukraine scandal on Friday. Democrats are seeking documents and communications related to whether Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his 2020 rival Joe Biden, in a scandal that has consumed Washington and thrown up new developments daily since bursting into …

NBC News reports: Weeks before the whistleblower’s complaint became public, the CIA’s top lawyer made what she considered to be a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the whistleblower’s allegations that President Donald Trump abused his office in pressuring the Ukrainian president, U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News. The move by the CIA’s general counsel, Trump …

The Hill reports: Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on Friday called President Trump a “traitor” to the U.S. while discussing the president’s dealings with Ukraine. “The American president is a traitor to the United States. He is literally the most un-American president that we’ve had probably since Andrew Johnson,” Scaramucci said on CNN. “I would have thought that …

CBS News reports: In an on-the-record interview with the Wall Street Journal, Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson said he learned of a possible quid pro quo from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Sondland told him that aid to Ukraine, according to the Journal, was tied to the president’s wish that Ukraine investigate matters related to the …

The Hill reports: White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Friday declined to say whether he’s ever raised investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden during talks with Chinese officials. During a combative exchange with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, Navarro slammed the network’s reporting that President Trump spoke about Biden’s political prospects during a June call with Chinese President Xi Jinping without …

Time Magazine reports: The White House is preparing to formally object to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as soon as today, saying it won’t cooperate with the probe because it was initiated without a vote of the House. The White House Counsel’s Office was preparing to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi objecting to the form of the impeachment investigation, …

Axios reports: President Trump is going all in. He declared he has the “absolute right” to call for foreign nations to investigate political rivals — publicly calling on China to investigate the Bidens — and he plans to ask Democrats to vote on starting impeachment or get stonewalled. Why it matters: It now seems increasingly inevitable the House will impeach …

The Associated Press reports: Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said on Friday that his office is reviewing all the cases that were closed by his predecessors, including several related to the owner of a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son sat on the board. Ruslan Ryaboshapka’s comments came amid an impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump that relates …

Business Insider reports: The US House Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign Affairs Committees released a trove of text messages between top US diplomats’ revealing their internal turmoil regarding Ukraine, on Thursday night. The content of the messages range from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, military aid to Ukraine, and, investigations, among other topics. The messages are between Bill Taylor, …