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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

Shame on CNN for glossing over Trump’s word salad of lies. In the above article, they quote him as follows:

“We had a great conversation. The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption – all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son (adding to the corruption),” Trump told reporters.

Note that CNN inserted the phrase “(adding to the corruption)” at the end. Trump did not say that. He said, “creating to the the corruption already in the Ukraine and Ukraine Ukraine’s got a lot of problems.” See it here.

It should not be CNN’s role to make sense out of Trump’s gibberish. The fact that Trump is floundering as he speaks adds additional weight to the sense that he is lying. That’s what a lying person does as they struggle to get their lies straight.

Here’s the entire disjointed mess of yet another “press conference” shouted over the roar of a helicopter engine (he dishes up his word salad on the phone conversation starting at about the 2 minute mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGNk5EjumRE

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Trump continues to babble about his phone call with the Ukrainian President. This time during a talk at a Coast Guard base in Houston. Trump’s rambling remarks amount to an admission (his second today) that he asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Here’s the clip:

And if you’d like context, here’s his full talk (the above excerpt starts at 12:50).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOyvA2qpWe4

Here’s a transcription. Believe it or not, this is word for word. For the most part, Trump is incoherent here – just tossing out phrases. You can decipher just enough of what he’s saying to determine that he did indeed commit the impeachable offense of asking a foreign government to investigate his political opponent.

Q.: On this call did you raise Joe Biden or his son’s name with Ukraine?

Trump: Well I don’t even want to mention it, but certainly I’d have every right to if there’s corruption and we’re paying lots of money to a country, we don’t want a country that we’re giving massive aid to to be corrupting our system and we don’t want it to be corrupt in any way, but we certainly don’t want it to be corrupting our system. I’ve been hearing about the Ukraine all during this Russian hoax the witch hunt that they went through that now turned out to be a zero, but after two years, all through I’ve been hearing the name, “Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. A lot of things came out of Ukraine.” So we don’t want to let anything having to do with any of that really, you know, hurt our country so it would be fine to do it but you will see one of the finest one of the nicest if we do that or I’ll have somebody, I’ll give it to a respected source. They could look at it, but what I said was so good. It was a great conversation. It was a really great conversation and everybody will say that.

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Even the right-leaning WSJ is calling out Trump on his highly suspicious actions surrounding the whistleblower scandal. Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike were mystified as to why Trump was withholding aid to Ukraine. They repeatedly were stonewalled (sound familiar?) when trying to get answers from the Administration. The one key piece of information they lacked was that Trump was asking Ukraine to investigate his political rival.

For weeks, lawmakers of both parties struggled to get answers over why the Trump administration delayed money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine defend itself from the threat of Russian aggression.

The story of how Congress was left largely in the dark—and how it intervened to get the military aid back on track—has become another focal point amid revelations of a pressure campaign aimed at the Ukrainian government by President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to launch a broad investigation touching on who directed the suspension of aid, saying it should be part of a broader probe.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden ’s anticorruption efforts in the country while he was vice president and while his son Hunter Biden was working there. Neither Biden has been accused of wrongdoing over their work in Ukraine. Democrats have said the president was wrongfully pressuring a foreign leader to investigate a potential 2020 opponent, and part of a whistleblower complaint concerning Mr. Trump involves the Ukraine call, according to a person familiar with the matter.

That July conversation wasn’t known to lawmakers trying to get to the bottom of Mr. Trump’s opposition to a Ukraine aid package. As lawmakers lobbied Mr. Trump to release the money personally and called officials across his administration, they kept getting shifting responses, according to multiple interviews over the past few weeks.

“It’s not uncommon for foreign aid to be somewhat conditional; we don’t just give aid away under any and all circumstances,” said Steven Smith, a political-science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. But “if the money then is somehow withheld and [lawmakers aren’t] privy to the reason for it, then it’s a pretty serious situation.”

The Trump administration said that with the Ukraine money, it sought to more closely scrutinize how it was going to be used. The administration has sought to restrict foreign-aid disbursements several times, repeatedly drawing the ire of lawmakers who have insisted on the importance of the funds.

“That good-government process was run by the President’s policy team on this account to ensure that those goals were met,” a senior administration official said.

Politico reported on Aug. 28 that Mr. Trump had asked his national security team to review the $250 million in aid, which had been appropriated as part of the fiscal 2019 spending package.

Over a congressional recess, while the country was focused on mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, a handful of lawmakers engaged in a campaign to release the military aid.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) wrote that cutting off aid would be “an absolute gift” to the Russians. The co-chairs of the House Ukraine Caucus issued a statement saying the aid shouldn’t be delayed. On Sept. 3, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.), Rob Portman (R., Ohio), Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) wrote to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and the Office of Management and Budget and pointedly underscored their congressional prerogatives.

“This funding is crucial to the long term stability of Ukraine and has the continued backing and approval of the U.S. Congress which appropriated these funds,” they wrote. “We strongly urge you to direct the Department of Defense to obligate these funds immediately,” they said.

“We got nowhere,” Ms. Shaheen later said.

Part of the complication was that lawmakers couldn’t get clear answers from the administration on its rationale for holding up the military aid, making it nearly impossible to work through issues.

When some lawmakers spoke with Mr. Trump, the president told them that he was upset that other countries weren’t spending enough to bolster Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter.

That was the same explanation Mr. Trump gave to reporters on Sunday, when asked about Ukraine: “Germany should be spending much more, France, all of the European Union should be spending money. Why are we spending money and they’re not?”

But on Sept. 3, Vice President Mike Pence, who had met a day earlier with Mr. Zelensky, said that in the meeting, “as President Trump had me make clear, we have great concerns about issues of corruption.”

Mr. Pence said that “to invest additional taxpayer [money] in Ukraine, the president wants to be assured that those resources are truly making their way to the kind of investments that will contribute to security and stability in Ukraine.”

But military officials seemed less wary, lawmakers said.

“We were repeatedly promised by the military leaders when we pushed that the money was going to be released,” said Mr. Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We were assured repeatedly that they saw not only the need for it militarily, but also a clear path forward.”

Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee members were also receiving muddled answers.

“There was a lot of consternation about why this was held up and what was going on,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.), a member of the panel. “I don’t remember ever hearing a clear response about what the holdup was.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) tried to find out by asking Mr. Durbin, a co-chair of the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus, and Mr. Murphy why they thought funds had been held up. “We don’t know,” Mr. Durbin said.

Fed up, senators coalesced around an amendment that Mr. Durbin had sought to attach to a fiscal 2020 defense-spending bill to force the release of funds to Ukraine. The day before the Senate Appropriations Committee was scheduled to vote, the White House released the military aid, along with $142 million in State Department funds.

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:clap::clap::clap: brilliant

Cross-posting for reference :pray:

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House Democrats may vote this week on a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and party leaders consider ramping up impeachment proceedings against the president, according to lawmakers and aides.

Pelosi is expected to meet with the six committee chairmen investigating Trump on Tuesday afternoon to discuss Democrats’ next steps and may even issue a forceful statement endorsing the impeachment investigation.

Democratic leaders have also called a full caucus meeting for Tuesday afternoon, where the discussion is expected to center on their response to the episode.

Democratic leaders now view a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday featuring Trump’s top intelligence official — as well as a deadline that day for the State Department to turn over related documents potentially implicating the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani — as the deciding factor over whether to move forward with impeachment proceedings.

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Cross-posting

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And another Impeachment inquiry supporter - Rep Debbie Dingell

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All in for impeachment…

Reps. Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia are all freshman Democrats.

The president of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it. He allegedly sought to use the very security assistance dollars appropriated by Congress to create stability in the world, to help root out corruption and to protect our national security interests, for his own personal gain. These allegations are stunning, both in the national security threat they pose and the potential corruption they represent. We also know that on Sept. 9, the inspector general for the intelligence community notified Congress of a “credible” and “urgent” whistleblower complaint related to national security and potentially involving these allegations. Despite federal law requiring the disclosure of this complaint to Congress, the administration has blocked its release to Congress.

This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand. To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.

If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense. We do not arrive at this conclusion lightly, and we call on our colleagues in Congress to consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of “inherent contempt” and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security.

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A TIPPING POINT…Pelosi is calling her caucus. And Pelosi will be meeting with chairs of the investigation committees on Tues.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been quietly sounding out top allies and lawmakers about whether the time has come to impeach President Trump, a major development as several moderate House Democrats resistant to impeachment suddenly endorsed the extraordinary step of trying to oust the president.

Pelosi, according to multiple senior House Democrats and congressional aides, has been gauging the mood of her caucus about whether they believe allegations that Trump pressured a Ukrainian leader to investigate a political foe is a tipping point. She was making calls as late as Monday night, and many leadership aides who once thought Trump’s impeachment was unlikely now say they think it’s almost inevitable.

The seven lawmakers who backed impeachment in the Post op-ed — Reps. Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia — said they did not arrive at their decision lightly. They called on their colleagues to use all congressional authorities, including impeachment hearings, to “address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security.”

They weren’t alone. Reps. Angie Craig and Dean Phillips, two moderate Democrats from Minnesota, also joined those impeachment calls Monday.

In another telling shift, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) issued a lengthy statement Monday calling Trump’s conduct a “reckless abuse of power” and a “turning point.” A close Pelosi ally of similar views and temperament, she described being previously reticent to pursue impeachment for similar reasons as the speaker has stated: the fear that it would divide the country and a Senate acquittal might backfire.

But she said her thinking had changed, writing that an impeachment inquiry “may be the only recourse Congress has” to reproach Trump.

“Congress must meet this pivotal moment in our nation’s history with decisive action,” she wrote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-quietly-sounding-out-house-democrats-about-whether-to-impeach-trump-officials-say/2019/09/23/98a33fd8-de5f-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html

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Sen. Chris Murphy met with Ukrainian President – Confirms the leader was concerned that aid was being withheld


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrr0iwY_O1k

Sen. Chris Murphy visited Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, during the time when Trump was holding up aid that Congress had allocated to them. Murphy said that the very first thing Zelensky brought up was his concerns about the aid and the fact that it was being held up. This is very telling because it means Trump did not explicitly need to mention the aid while he was pressuring Zelensky to investigate (frame?) Joe Biden and his son.

During the phone call, the aid that was being withheld would have been the 600 pound gorilla on the line. As Trump pushed the Ukrainian President eight times to investigate Biden, it would have been obvious to Zelensky that the way to get the aid released (which they desperately needed to combat Russia’s aggression) would be to submit to Trump’s demands and investigate Biden.

In addition, it would have been obvious to Zelensky that Trump expected the investigation to conclude that Joe Biden was guilty. Surely the aid would not be released if Zelensky came back to Trump with a report exonerating the Bidens. Hence, it would not be an unbiased investigation, but a set up.

Excerpts from the Meet the Press transcript:

CHUCK TODD:

And joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who actually recently met with President Zelensky in Ukraine. Senator Murphy, welcome back to Meet the Press.

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY:

Good morning.

CHUCK TODD:

All right. So tell, tell me what your conversation was like with the president because I believe you met with him before the aid was released.

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY:

Right.

CHUCK TODD:

And it was during this time that the aid passed by Congress but for some reason was being held up by the administration. You were – tell me was this meeting in Kiev, number one? And what was the circumstances?

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY:

So I went to Kiev in part because I had heard these concerns from my friends there, that the government and Zelensky personally was really worried about these overtures he was getting in particular from Rudy Giuliani. And he didn’t understand whether this was an official government position, these requests to investigate the former vice president. So I went there to make it clear to him that the worst thing that he could do for the U.S.-Ukraine relationship was to get involved in an election here in the United States. I will say what was interesting to me was that he dispensed with the diplomatic protocols of that meeting. As soon as we sat down at the table in the presidential palace, he asked us what was going on with the aid, why was it being withheld.

He seemed very concerned and I think out of sorts about it. And then later in the meeting I raised with him these overtures from the Trump campaign. He gave me a very strong answer. He said they had no intention to get involved in an American election. They knew what damage it would do to them. And I left that meeting fairly confident that he understood.

CHUCK TODD:

What did the Trump administration tell you officially when you were trying to figure out why – what the holdup was?

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY:

So the reason that was given in particular to Senator Johnson, who I was there with.

CHUCK TODD:

Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin.

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY:

Republican from Wisconsin who had talked with the president shortly before our visit to Kiev. The reason that was given was that the president was concerned about corruption in Ukraine and he thought that the Europeans should be providing the aid instead of the United States. Those were the two reasons that were stated to us as we went. The embassy there didn’t seem to have really a readout from the White House at all when we asked them about it.

CHUCK TODD:

Do you have any reason to believe that the aid was suddenly released in connection with the discovery of this whistleblower complaint into the public?

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY:

I mean, the timing is obviously incredibly suspicious.

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Tuesday morning and it’s already up to 147:

:muscle:

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Another bizarre claim from Giuliani…

This is either the truth or a lie – either way it’s bad news for Giuliani and his client (co-conspirator?), Trump.

  1. If true, it’s a five-alarm State Department scandal. Since when does the State Department enlist private citizens to conduct foreign policy? Did Pompeo authorize this? If so, he should resign immediately and if he doesn’t, he should be impeached along with Trump. And while we’re at it, we should ask, did Pompeo sign off on the additional $140 million that Trump kicked in following his release of the original $250 million of aid to Ukraine? Those funds came from the State Department. Another possible impeachable offense by Pompeo.

  2. If it’s not true, then it’s more evidence that Giuliani is flagrantly lying about what was really going on with Trump’s “corruption investigation” in Ukraine.

Whether it’s 1) or 2) this is just one more reason we need to start the impeachment process against Trump so we can uncover the truth about this alleged corruption that threatens our national security.

Rudy Giuliani told Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday night that his recent dealings with Ukraine were initiated by the State Department.

“The State Department called me and said would I take a call from Mr. [Andriy] Yermak, who’s number two or three to the president-elect who is now the president,” said Giuliani, one of President Trump’s personal attorneys.

Giuliani said he then spoke with Yermak and that he then passed along the “enormously important facts” to the State Department.

When reached for comment, a State Department spokesperson said: "Mr. Giuliani is a private citizen and acts in a personal capacity as a lawyer for President Trump. He does not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government."

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:eyes:

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Watch :point_down:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?464684-1/speaker-pelosi-makes-announcement-impeachment&live

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Cross-posting for the wiki :pray: (will update tomorrow hopefully)

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great job…

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Pelosi, Hoyer Announce Floor Consideration of Resolution Regarding Whistleblower Complaint

Washington, D.C. – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer released the following joint statement today:

“Allegations that the President of the United States sought to enlist a foreign government to interfere in our democratic process by investigating one of his political rivals – and may have used the withholding of Congressionally-appropriated foreign assistance days earlier as intimidation – are deeply alarming. It is imperative that the Acting Director of National Intelligence provide Congress the complaint, as specified under the law, and all requests for documents and testimony relating to this allegation. Furthermore, the whistleblower who brought this matter to the attention of the American people must be protected.

On Wednesday, the House will vote on a resolution making it clear Congress’s disapproval of the Administration’s effort to block the release of the complaint and the need to protect the whistleblower. This is not a partisan matter, it’s about the integrity of our democracy, respect for the rule of law and defending our Constitution. We hope that all Members of the House – Democrats and Republicans alike – will join in upholding the rule of law and oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution as Representatives of the American people.”

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FYI guys, it’s not clear if there will be a formal vote to open a new inquiry or if they will create a select committee or if there will be a full house vote to bring articles of impeachment. I think the only thing that has clearly changed today is the position of the Speaker of the House on impeachment.

I’m thinking this is full steam ahead on impeachment, which is great news for the committee’s already hard at work. So far it looks like Nancy will be using the existing framework of committees, launching impeachment from the Judiciary Committee.

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The number of Dems (and one Independent) has been skyrocketing forward for the Impeachment process to begin. 218 votes needed to Impeach.

167 House Democrats and 1 independent publicly support launching an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, according to an Axios analysis.

Driving the news: Allegations that Trump may have pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden have unleashed a new wave of calls to impeach Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet Tuesday with the 6 committee chairs leading different strands of the Trump investigation, before a full caucus meeting about impeachment at 4 p.m. ET.

Why it matters: One summer phone call by President Trump is proving to be more of an impeachment catalyst for House Democrats than two years of drip-drip revelations from Robert Mueller’s investigation. An overwhelming majority of House Democrats now support an impeachment inquiry against Trump.

The big picture: The total jumped after Trump hurled racist attacks against a group of congresswomen of color who had criticized his immigration policy. A major uptick emerged in the aftermath of Robert Mueller’s late May statement, and again after the former special counsel’s Capitol Hill testimony in July. The total was at 80 members as of June.

The bottom line: Pelosi has long wagered that impeachment would be fruitless without overwhelming public support.

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Calling it like it is…Presidential Candidate/Rep Tim Ryan (D-OH)

and Rep Justin Amash (I-MI) - another truth teller

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