Tag Archives: Ukraine

Politico reports: Rudy Giuliani’s problems keep piling up. His responsibilities are shrinking as Donald Trump’s TV-friendly personal attorney. His efforts to dig up dirt on the president’s political opponents have landed his highest-profile client in a congressional impeachment investigation. And two of his foreign-born business associates are headed to trial on charges that are part of a broader effort by …

CNN reports: Two weeks ago when they were arrested, Parnas and Fruman were preparing to fly to Vienna, Austria, to meet Giuliani and another key figure in the impeachment investigation, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, according to four sources familiar with their trip. Shokin is the same Ukrainian official who former Vice President Joe Biden — along with other …

Mediaite reports: The Wall Street Journal editorial board made the argument that even if President Donald Trump sought a quid pro quo with Ukraine, he shouldn’t be impeached because he was “too inept” to make it happen. The newest op-ed from the Journal’s editorial board acknowledges that Trump’s defenses have taken a hit now that the testimony from top Ukraine …

Politico reports: Conservative lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who this year took on as a client an oligarch at the center of the Ukraine scandal, also represent the conservative columnist who has advanced Trump-friendly claims of corruption in Kyiv. “John Solomon has been a client of our firm for a very long time,” Joe diGenova told POLITICO on Thursday. …

Just Security reports: While the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has issued legal opinions that a sitting president cannot be indicted, there is no similar prohibition on indicting a president’s personal lawyer or other potential co-conspirators involved in committing a federal crime. Based on facts already in the public record, we believe that Rudolph Giuliani could be indicted …

The National Law Journal reports: A federal judge on Wednesday said he wants the State Department to produce certain documents on Ukraine, including communications between President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and State Department officials, to a watchdog group within 30 days. American Oversight filed an open records request about five months ago for State Department communications with Giuliani, …

The New York Times reports: Senior White House officials suspected that a colleague whom they viewed as a political partisan was ferrying documents about Ukraine in recent months to President Trump, effectively creating another back channel to him that could warp American policy, according to congressional testimony and interviews. Colleagues grew alarmed after hearing that Mr. Trump had referred to …

The New York Law Journal reports: The New York City Bar Association in a statement Wednesday called on U.S. Attorney General William Barr to stand aside in any ongoing or future review by the Department of Justice of issues stemming from the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, in which Barr has allegedly involved. If Barr does not recuse himself, the …

The Associated Press reports: More than two months before the phone call that launched the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Ukraine’s newly elected leader was already worried about pressure from the U.S. president to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden. Volodymyr Zelenskiy gathered a small group of advisers on May 7 in Kyiv for a meeting that was supposed …

The Daily Beast reports: The White House issued a statement late Tuesday lashing out at “far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats” after President Trump’s acting ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, told Congress that U.S. military aid to Ukraine was made contingent on the Ukrainian president formally announcing investigations into U.S. domestic affairs. “President Trump has done nothing wrong—this is a …

CBS News reports: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied telling President Trump his July phone call with the Ukrainian president was “innocent,” as the president had indicated earlier this month. Asked on Tuesday whether he believes the president has handled the U.S. relationship with Ukraine “perfectly,” McConnell told CBS News he had not spoken to the president about the July …

The Washington Post reports: The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain. Acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. testified behind closed doors …

CNBC reports: A top diplomat testified Tuesday in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump after House Democrats issued a subpoena to him following State Department attempts to block his appearance, an official working on the probe told NBC News. Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor appeared Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill for a scheduled deposition in the House …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine for information he could use against political rivals came as he was being urged to adopt a hostile view of that country by its regional adversaries, including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, current and former U.S. officials said. Trump’s conversations with Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and others reinforced his …

Mediaite reports: The Wall Street Journal took a deep dive into Lev Parnas’s private Instagram account, revealing some interesting details about the timeline of his relationship with Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump. Parnas, who was recently arrested for campaign finance violations alongside Igor Fruman, kept a multitude of photos from his meetings with the Trump family, his visits to Trump …

ABC News reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he never saw the kind of quid pro quo that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney referred to on Thursday with regard to the decision-making process he was involved in. “The conversation was always around what were the strategic implications,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “Would …

CNN reports: Career diplomat George Kent told congressional investigators in his closed-door testimony this week that Rudy Giuliani asked the State Department and the White House to grant a visa to the former Ukrainian official who Joe Biden had pushed to have removed when he was vice president, according to four people familiar with Kent’s testimony. Kent, the deputy assistant …

NBC News reports: The fast-moving impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, stemming from the president’s dealings with Ukraine, involves numerous hearings, depositions and subpoenas of present and former top administration officials and other figures — and more than a few presidential tweets. Several Trump administration officials are scheduled to appear for depositions next week as part of the impeachment inquiry, …

The New York Times reports: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reporters that the release of military aid to Ukraine this summer was linked in part to White House demands that Ukraine’s government investigate what he called corruption by Democrats in the 2016 American presidential campaign. It was the first time a White House official has …

ABC News reports: The U.S. ambassador to the European Union will tell Congress that President Donald Trump directed him and others to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to push Ukraine to announce investigations, but that he was in the dark on the extent of Giuliani’s efforts and the political motive behind it, according to his opening statement obtained …