A Princeton graduate who was convicted of killing his father, a hedge fund manager, after he reduced his son’s allowance was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison on Friday.
Thomas Gilbert Jr. was 30 years old and was receiving $1,000 a week from his parents, multiple outletsreported.
Prosecutors said he spent that money “on travel, memberships to elite sporting clubs, and other personal expenses.”
But starting in in 2014, his parents urged him to become more self-sufficient “and incrementally reduced his monthly allowance,” prosecutors said.
When they cut his allowance to $300 on January 4, 2015, prosecutors said Gilbert Jr. walked into their Manhattan home and shot his 70-year-old father in the head with a .40-caliber Glock.
He put the gun in his dad’s hand before leaving, prosecutors said, apparently to make the shooting look like a suicide.
“Thomas Gilbert, Sr. was a beloved member of his family and business community when his own son murdered him in a cold-blooded killing,” District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement about the founder of Wainscott Capital Partners. “I hope that the resolution of this case helps his loved as they continue to heal from this devastating loss.
“In spite of all his love and generosity, this defendant shot his father at close range in his own apartment in an unconscionable and brutal crime,” Vance said in June when Gilbert Jr. was convicted.
Gilbert Jr.’s mother, Shelley Gilbert, and his lawyer argued he was insane at the time of the shooting and should be institutionalized.
“We are definitely going to appeal,” Arnold Levine, Gilbert Jr.’s lawyer, told BuzzFeed News. “We are disappointed in the sentence but not necessarily surprised.”
House Freedom Caucus Chairman-elect Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced the resolution Friday shortly after Trump took to Twitter to demand Schiff’s resignation over his remarks, which focused on the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Schiff had pointed to a reconstituted transcript of the conversation released by the White House, but paraphrased some points and offered an exaggerated version of the discussion, including saying that Trump directed Zelensky to “make up dirt on my political opponent” a full “seven times.”
Schiff’s remarks during the hearing Thursday were met with backlash from Republicans, who argued it was inappropriate given the nature of the hearing, where acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified on his handling of a whistleblower complaint filed over the Trump call.
Biggs’s measure asserts that Schiff’s comments were an “egregiously false and fabricated retelling” that “had no relationship to the call itself,” alleging “these actions of Chairman Schiff misled the American people, bring disrepute upon the House of Representatives, and make a mockery of the impeachment process, one of this chamber’s most solemn constitutional duties.”
The resolution also includes language alleging that members of the House Intelligence Committee “have lost faith” in Schiff’s ability to be objective as chairman and that his remarks hindered the committee’s ability to carry out its oversight responsibilities.
“The House of Representatives censures and condemns Representative Adam Schiff for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives; Representative Adam Schiff will forthwith present himself in the well of the House for the pronouncement of censure; and Representative Adam Schiff will be censured with the public reading of this resolution by the Speaker,” the resolution says.
A censure vote is intended to allow Congress to publicly rebuke and show disapproval of a member’s behavior or misconduct, though the resolution introduced Friday faces an uphill battle in the Democratic-controlled House.
Schiff defended his comments during the hearing Thursday, arguing they were made partially in jest.
“My summary of the president’s call was meant to be, at least part, in parody. The fact that that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself,” he said Thursday.
“Of course, the president never said, ‘If you don’t understand me I’m going to say it seven more times,’ my point is, that’s the message that the Ukraine president was receiving in not so many words,” he added.
Biggs, a Trump ally in the lower chamber, argued the move was “inexcusable” given the gravity of impeachment.
“Democrats previously initiated an impeachment inquiry, which leads to one of the most serious, constitutional duties of Members of Congress: removal of the president of the United States,” he said in a statement.
“Through this process, if the President has committed high crimes or misdemeanors, Congress may overturn the election of the President and the will of the American people. It is therefore inexcusable to toy with the process and mislead the American public with such a statement.”
Kurt Volker, the Unites States special representative on Ukrainewho got caught in the middle of a whistle-blower complaint over President Donald Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, has resigned, according to a US official.
Volker’s departure is the first since the emergence of reports that Trump may have abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine former Vice President Joe Biden, the current Democratic frontrunner, and help his own re-election.
The disclosures have prompted an impeachment inquiry, and Congress on Friday ordered Volker to answer questions in the investigation next week.
The official was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency that Volker told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday of his decision to leave the job, following disclosures that he had connected Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden and his family over alleged corrupt business dealings.
Giuliani has said he was in frequent contact with Volker about his efforts.
The State Department had no immediate comment on his resignation and has only said that Volker put Giuliani in touch with an aide to Ukraine’s president.
Pompeo said on Thursday that as far as he knew, all State Department employees had acted appropriately in dealing with Ukraine.
Volker’s resignation was first reported by the student newspaper at Arizona State University, where he directs an institute.
The State Press quoted a university spokesperson as saying that Volker had quit his Ukraine position.
The Arizona Republic also quoted the university’s president, Michael Crow, as confirming that Volker would stay at the institute but leave the State Department.
Answers sought
Committees in the Democratic-led House of Representatives ordered Volker to appear next Thursday to answer questions.
In a letter released on Friday, the legislators pointed to a tweet by Giuliani, in which he showed a screenshot of a conversation in which Volker spoke of connecting him with a top adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The failure of any of these Department employees to appear for their scheduled depositions shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” read the letter to Pompeo.
Volker is a veteran diplomat involved in Europe who was appointed US ambassador to NATO under former President George W Bush.
He left the diplomatic service to become a consultant and in 2012 was named executive director of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, a centre focused on national security named after senator John McCain.
The Trump administration in 2017 appointed Volker to take charge of US policy on Ukraine, in an unusual arrangement in which he was essentially a volunteer for the State Department while maintaining his university duties.
As an envoy, Volker was tasked with overseeing critical US support to Ukraine as it faces a separatist conflict backed by Russia.
More than 13,000 people have died since fighting broke out in 2014 when Russia also annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Democrats are looking into whether Trump used a delay in a $400m aid package for Ukraine as leverage to press for action on Biden.
In this March 3, 2015, photo, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers escort an arrestee in an apartment building in the Bronx borough of New York during a series of early morning raids.
Richard Drew/AP
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In this March 3, 2015, photo, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers escort an arrestee in an apartment building in the Bronx borough of New York during a series of early morning raids.
Richard Drew/AP
Updated at 3:03 PM ET
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s effort to expand fast-track deportation regulations for undocumented immigrants without the use of immigration courts.
The procedure, known as “expedited removal,” has previously been used to deport undocumented immigrants who cross into the U.S. by land without an immigration hearing or access to an attorney if they are arrested within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of their arrival. In July, the administration expanded the rule to include undocumented immigrants who couldn’t prove they had been in the U.S. continuously for two years or more, no matter where they were in the country.
In a 126-page report issued just before midnight on Friday, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a preliminary injunction on the policy change. She stated that the administration did not follow the correct decision-making procedures, such as the formal notice-and-comment period required for major federal rule changes, and likely violated federal law in failing to do so. She said that “no good cause exists for the agency to have not complied with these mandates in this instance.”
Jackson, who is an Obama-era appointee, also said that the July notice by the Department of Homeland Security seemed “arbitrary and capricious.”
“Put in common parlance, if a policy decision that an agency makes is of sufficient consequence that it qualifies as an agency rule, then arbitrariness in deciding the contours of that rule — e.g., decision making by Ouija board or dart board, rock/paper/scissors, or even the Magic 8 Ball — simply will not do,” Jackson wrote. “There are well-established legal constraints on the manner in which an agency exercises its discretion to make discretionary policy decisions, and there are also legally established consequences if an agency does not adhere to these procedural requirements when it determines the policies that it imposes.”
The Department of Homeland Security had argued that the policy change would relieve overburdened immigration courts and “harmonize” existing regulations to apply equally to undocumented immigrants whether they arrive by land or sea.
“The effect of that change will be to enhance national security and public safety — while reducing government costs — by facilitating prompt immigration determinations,” DHS said in the July notice.
“We are past the breaking point and must take all appropriate action to enforce the law, along the U.S. borders and within the country’s interior,” said acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan when the new policy was announced. “This designation makes it clear that if you have no legal right to be here, we will remove you.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP sought the preliminary injunction.
“The court rejected the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to remove hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. without any legal recourse,” ACLU attorney Anand Balakrishnan, who argued the case, said in a statement. “This ruling recognizes the irreparable harm of this policy.”
In a statement Saturday afternoon, a DOJ spokesman said:
“Congress expressly authorized the Secretary of Homeland Security to act with dispatch to remove from the country aliens who have no right to be here. The district court’s decision squarely conflicts with that express grant of authority and vastly exceeds the district court’s own authority. This ruling undermines the laws enacted by Congress and the Trump Administration’s careful efforts to implement those laws.”
The preliminary injunction blocks the expanded expedited removal policy from being applied until the court has finished litigation on the matter.
Sunday is the start of the Jewish New Year as Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset.Rosh Hashanah marks the first day of the “10 Days of Repentance,” where Jewish people acknowledge their sins of the previous year and are judged for their sins by God. The 10 days end with Yom Kippur, which is the “Day of Repentance” and constitutes the holiest Jewish holiday. Those attending synagogue services will hear the sound of a ram’s horn being blown. In all, the ceremonial horn (called a shofar) is blown 100 times. It is the only Jewish holiday that is two days long both outside and inside Israel. Rosh Hashanah ends at sunset on Tuesday.
“Saturday Night Live” is returning for Season 45, tapping all-time “SNL” great Eddie Murphy along with David Harbour of “Stranger Things” and Phoebe Waller-Bridge of “Fleabag.” The biggest name, however, could be Taylor Swift, who will make her third appearance as a musical guest on the season’s second show. Murphy, making his first return to “SNL” since hosting in December 1984, will headline the final show of 2019 on Dec. 21. Woody Harrelson, making his fourth hosting visit, will open the NBC late-night institution’s season on Saturday as “SNL” continues its recent practice of broadcasting the series live throughout the country.
National parks across the country are waiving entrance fees Saturday for National Public Lands Day. There’s a national park in every state, and while not every park charges admission, the fee-free days are designed to encourage visitors to see some of the country’s highest-profile parks, from Arizona’s Grand Canyon to California’s Yosemite and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Also among the National Park Service’s 418 sites across the country are Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, Zion National Park in Utah and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
College football powerhouses hope to avoid slipups
The college football schedule picks up steam this weekend with key showdowns to keep an eye on. Ohio State getting trounced by a random Big Ten school has become a fall tradition, and this week the No. 6-rated Buckeyes visit Nebraska. Can the Cornhuskers pull off a shocker? Elsewhere, No. 7 Auburn, No. 10 Notre Dame and No. 17 Washington face games that could profoundly impact the College Football Playoff race. Before settling in for a Saturday of football, see who our experts think will win in every matchup involving a ranked team.
SportsPulse: Death, taxes and Ohio State getting trounced by a random Big Ten school has become a fall tradition. As Paul Myerberg prognosticates, the Buckeyes should be on high alert against Nebraska. USA TODAY
Take to the skies at Disney World
The long-awaited aerial transportation system at the Walt Disney World megaresort is set to take flight Sunday. Disney Skyliner, a state-of-the-art aerial gondola system, is the latest addition to one of the largest private transportation systems in the U.S., according to the Associated Press. In any given 24 hours, 350,000 people — the population of a medium-size city — can be on Disney World property, which is the physical size of San Francisco. The system will connect the Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme parks to four resort hotels. “There are a lot of benefits to being in the air,” said Alison Armor, vice president of transportation at Disney World. “People are off the roadways. They’re moving very smoothly and very seamlessly.”
Kurt Volker, the Unites States special representative on Ukrainewho got caught in the middle of a whistle-blower complaint over President Donald Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, has resigned, according to a US official.
Volker’s departure is the first since the emergence of reports that Trump may have abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine former Vice President Joe Biden, the current Democratic frontrunner, and help his own re-election.
The disclosures have prompted an impeachment inquiry, and Congress on Friday ordered Volker to answer questions in the investigation next week.
The official was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency that Volker told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday of his decision to leave the job, following disclosures that he had connected Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden and his family over alleged corrupt business dealings.
Giuliani has said he was in frequent contact with Volker about his efforts.
The State Department had no immediate comment on his resignation and has only said that Volker put Giuliani in touch with an aide to Ukraine’s president.
Pompeo said on Thursday that as far as he knew, all State Department employees had acted appropriately in dealing with Ukraine.
Volker’s resignation was first reported by the student newspaper at Arizona State University, where he directs an institute.
The State Press quoted a university spokesperson as saying that Volker had quit his Ukraine position.
The Arizona Republic also quoted the university’s president, Michael Crow, as confirming that Volker would stay at the institute but leave the State Department.
Answers sought
Committees in the Democratic-led House of Representatives ordered Volker to appear next Thursday to answer questions.
In a letter released on Friday, the legislators pointed to a tweet by Giuliani, in which he showed a screenshot of a conversation in which Volker spoke of connecting him with a top adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The failure of any of these Department employees to appear for their scheduled depositions shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” read the letter to Pompeo.
Volker is a veteran diplomat involved in Europe who was appointed US ambassador to NATO under former President George W Bush.
He left the diplomatic service to become a consultant and in 2012 was named executive director of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, a centre focused on national security named after senator John McCain.
The Trump administration in 2017 appointed Volker to take charge of US policy on Ukraine, in an unusual arrangement in which he was essentially a volunteer for the State Department while maintaining his university duties.
As an envoy, Volker was tasked with overseeing critical US support to Ukraine as it faces a separatist conflict backed by Russia.
More than 13,000 people have died since fighting broke out in 2014 when Russia also annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Democrats are looking into whether Trump used a delay in a $400m aid package for Ukraine as leverage to press for action on Biden.
“Lennon Walls carry the spirit of civil disobedience from the Umbrella movement,” said pro-democracy protester Kelvin Law, 24.
“I am not sure when this protest will end. Either we win or we lose. But aslong as we are united and fight, generation after generation, we can achieve democracy.”
Protesters appealed to the British two weeks ago to rein in China and ensure it respects the city’s freedoms. They plan to do so again on Tuesday.
Britain says it has a legal responsibility to ensure China abides by the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which lays out the “one country, two systems” arrangement.
At the same time, it is pinning its hopes on closer trade and investment cooperation with China, which since 1997 has risen to become the world’s second-largest economy, after it leaves the European Union at the end of October.
The protests were sparked in June by planned legislation, since withdrawn, that would have allowed the extradition of suspected criminals to mainland China. But they have since expanded into a broader pro-democracy movement.
The student-led Umbrella protests that gridlocked the city for 79 days 2014 failed to wrest concessions from Beijing.
One of the leaders of those protests, the bespectacled Joshua Wong, 22, said on Saturday he will run for local district council elections in November.
“It’s time to let Emperor Xi (Chinese President Xi Jinping) be aware that now is our battle,” he told reporters. “…We stand in solidarity, we stand as one.
The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China marked the Umbrella anniversary with a statement denouncing the “accelerated erosion” of Hong Kong’s autonomy.
“We call on the Hong Kong government to make the selection of the Chief Executive and the election of all members of the Legislative Council by universal suffrage a priority and take concrete steps to strengthen Hong Kong’s autonomy,” it said.
Dan Garrett, a U.S. academic who gave evidence before the commission, said on Twitter he was not allowed to land in Hong Kong on Thursday for the first time in 20 years of visiting and living in the territory.
Various protests are expected on Saturday and Sunday, but the biggest are likely to be on Tuesday, marking the Oct. 1 anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Activists plan a mass rally from Victoria Park in the bustling Causeway Bay district to Chater Garden, a cricket pitch back in colonial days, in downtown Central.
Official festivities for National Day have been scaled back, with authorities keen to avoid embarrassing Beijing at a time when Xi is seeking to project an image of national strength and unity.
US President Donald Trump is lashing out at House Democrats amid an impeachment investigation and a whistleblower complaint over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. (Sept. 26) AP Domestic
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s name isn’t mentioned in the explosive whistleblower complaint that alleges President Donald Trump used the power of his office to press a foreign government for damaging information about a top political rival.
And the nation’s top diplomat insisted on Thursday that State Department officials had acted appropriately in their dealings with Ukraine’s new government, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But Pompeo – one of Trump’s most trusted advisers and his former CIA chief – was almost certainly briefed on the controversial Trump-Zelensky phone call that prompted an intelligence officer to file the whistleblower complaint and House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry.
On Thursday, Giuliani posted a text message on Twitter that appeared to be from the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, connecting the former New York mayor to Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky.
“As discussed, connecting you here with Andrey Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky,” the July 19 text message reads, using an alternative spelling for Yermak’s first name. “I suggest we schedule a call together on Monday – maybe 10 am or 11 am Washington time?”
Earlier this week, Giuliani said he only contacted Ukrainian officials at the urging of the State Department.
“I never talked to a Ukrainian official until the State Department called me and asked me to do it,” Giuliani told Fox News on Tuesday. “And then I reported to every conversation back to them.”
For months, Giuliani has been pressing the Ukrainians for damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, whose sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company when Biden was Obama’s No. 2. Trump and Giuliani have alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens, but they have not produced any evidence of impropriety.
Volker, who serves in the unpaid position on a part-time basis, did not respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the State Department’s press office. Giuliani did not respond to a voicemail and text messages from USA TODAY.
Democrats were flabbergasted by Giuliani’s Twitter revelations seeming to show Volker’s involvement.
“This isn’t real, is it? Giuliani didn’t just voluntarily expose a highly illegal coordination between the Trump campaign and the State Department?” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted in response to Giuliani’s post.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, called it “outrageously inappropriate” for Trump’s personal lawyer to be engaging with foreign officials on what amounted to a campaign issue and for the State Department to be facilitating such interactions.
On Friday, House Democrats sent a subpoena to Pompeo demanding documents related to the State Department’s interactions with Giuliani and with Ukrainian officials.
“Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Eliot Engel, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in a letter with two other committee chairmen involved in the impeachment inquiry.
Engel, D-N.Y., said he had also notified Pompeo that the three committees had scheduled depositions for five State Department employees, including Volker.
According to whistleblower complaint, Volker and another U.S. ambassador, Gordon Sondland, had met with Giuliani to try to “contain the damage” his efforts were having on U.S. national security. The whistleblower said Volker and Sondland also met with Ukrainian officials to help them navigate the “differing messages” they were getting through official U.S. government channels and Giuliani’s private outreach.
At a news conference Thursday, Pompeo did not directly answer a question about whether the State Department instructed Giuliani to reach out to Ukrainian officials on Trump’s behalf.
“Here’s what I’ll say this morning about the engagement of the State Department,” Pompeo told reporters. “To the best of my knowledge, so from what I’ve seen so far, each of the actions that were undertaken by State Department officials was entirely appropriate and consistent with the objective that we’ve had certainly since this new government has come into office.”
Pompeo also sidestepped a question last week about whether he pressed Ukraine’s foreign minister, during a September phone call, to open an investigation into the Bidens. Pompeo offered a only vague account of that conversation.
According to the whistleblower’s account, the State Department’s top counselor, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, was listening in on Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky. In that conversation, Trump asked Zelensky for a “favor,” pressing him to open an investigation of Biden, according to a summary released by the White House.
Brechbuhl would have briefed Pompeo “immediately” on the conversation, said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has served as a State Department adviser in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The question, Miller said, is what did Pompeo do once he learned the details of Trump’s remarks. On moral and ethical grounds, Miller said, Pompeo should have gone to Trump and said: “Mr. President, the implications of what you’ve done are devastating, both to American foreign policy and prospectively to your own interests. You may have broken the law.”
Miller said there’s no way to know, based on the evidence that has emerged so far, how Pompeo handled the situation. But he noted that Pompeo is himself a politician, with his own ambitions, and he has become one of Trump’s closest advisers.
“Pompeo was probably very reluctant to get in the middle of this,” Miller said. “The circumstantial evidence would suggest that Pompeo was not prepared to confront the president” and was similarly unable or unwilling to stop Giuliani’s outreach to the Ukrainians.
Engel, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said he’s concerned that Trump appointees at the State Department are “deeply entangled in this scandal.”
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, has also called on Pompeo to explain what actions he and other State Department employees took to help Trump and Giuliani press Ukraine for damaging information about Biden.
“As Secretary of State, you are charged with carrying out foreign policy for the United States,” Menendez wrote in a letter to Pompeo on Friday. “Yet it appears that our policy with Ukraine was effectively outsourced to a private individual pursuing the personal vendettas of the president.”
The State Department press office did not respond to a request for comment on Menendez’ letter.
On a Friday in late July, Rudy Giuliani boarded a plane to Spain to meet with an adviser to the Ukrainian president about a plan to investigate Joe Biden.
The trip was described in a whistleblower’s complaint. Several former Giuliani colleagues said they believe it should appear in a future indictment.
Giuliani’s role in the scandal that has triggered an impeachment inquiry is still coming into focus. But several legal experts who used to work with the former U.S. attorney-turned New York City mayor-turned chief President Donald Trump defender told NBC News they believe his conduct likely broke the law.
“This is certainly not the Giuliani that I know,” said Jeffrey Harris, who worked as Giuliani’s top assistant when he was at the Justice Department in the President Ronald Reagan administration. “I think the Giuliani that I know would prosecute the Giuliani of today.”
Harris and the other former Justice Department lawyers said they believe Giuliani has potentially exposed himself to a range of offenses — from breaking federal election laws to bribery to extortion — through his efforts to assist the Ukrainians in probing Biden, Trump’s top political opponent.
NBC News reached out to seven former colleagues of Giuliani’s. Of the six who offered comments on or off the record, none defended him.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the impeachment inquiry
At the heart of the whistleblower’s complaint is the allegation that Trump abused his power by soliciting “interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 elections — with Giuliani acting as the president’s point person in the effort.
“There’s a whole apparatus of the United States government that’s set up to deal with foreign officials and Rudy Giuliani’s not one of them,” said Harris, now a lawyer in private practice in Washington D.C.
“To the extent that you could look at this as using government resources for your benefit, there are a number of crimes that this conduct would answer to.”
Giuliani’s trip to Spain came one day after Trump urged Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to probe Biden and his son Hunter, according to the whistleblower’s complaint.
The president has been pushing the claim that Biden helped to force out a Ukrainian prosecutor because the man was probing a gas company that employed Hunter Biden as a consultant. The prosecutor was ousted amid calls from top officials of several Western nations over concerns he wasn’t doing enough to root out deep-seated corruption.
In addition to his trip in Spain, the whistleblower’s complaint says, Giuliani had other contacts with Ukrainian officials as part of the effort to dig up dirt on Biden. Giuliani met with Ukraine’s prosecutor general on at least two occasions — in New York in January and in Warsaw, Poland in February, according to the complaint.
Bruce Fein, who worked at the Justice Department with Giuliani in the early 1980s, said he believes Giuliani could be prosecuted for breaking federal election laws.
“He was soliciting a foreign government to help Trump’s 2020 campaign. That’s a problem,” said Fein, a former special assistant to the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel under President Richard Nixon and associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.
“Federal election laws make it illegal to solicit anything of value from a foreign government or persons to influence the outcome of an election.”
Fein said Giuliani could also have opened himself up to bribery charges in connection with the president allegedly withholding military funds in order to pressure the Ukraine to launch an investigation of the Bidens.
“If Giuliani was privy to that, he could be complicit with Trump in conspiring to solicit a bribe,” Fein said.
Giuliani, who has said he’s been working as an unpaid attorney for Trump, has told NBC News that he went to Spain on his own dime on a trip he described as a mix of business and pleasure. Giuliani is not listed as receiving any money from the Trump campaign, according to FEC filings.
President-elect Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani shake hands following a meeting at Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on Nov. 20, 2016.Drew Angerer / Getty Images file
Reached for comment on Friday night, Giuliani scoffed at the suggestion that he had broken the law.
“Bulls–t,” Giuliani texted. “They don’t know what they are talking about. What crimes.”
Giuliani followed up with a phone call in which he used colorful language to defend his actions and attack his former colleagues.
He said he could not have committed bribery because he didn’t offer the Ukrainians anything of value. “Are these guys lawyers or are they morons?” Giuliani said.
Giuliani also pushed back against the claims that he tried to pressure the Ukrainians or influence the upcoming presidential election.
“I did not threaten them. I didn’t tell them what to do,” Giuliani told NBC News. “I recommended that it would be a good thing to complete the investigations.”
He added: “I wasn’t going there to affect the 2020 elections. I was going there to clear my client. It’s totally absurd.”
Giuliani does have his defenders from his time working for the Justice Department, including Joseph diGenova, a prominent Fox News contributor.
Daniel Richman, who worked under Giuliani in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan in the late 1980s, said he needed to see more evidence before making a conclusive determination. But he agreed that an effort to assist in a plot to withhold funds from a foreign power in exchange for a personal or political favor could expose Giuliani to criminal charges.
“An effort to use congressionally allocated funds as a club to extract a personal benefit could easily fit within some combination of fraud, extortion, and perhaps bribery statutes,” said Richman, now a professor at Columbia Law School.
Other former prosecutors who worked with Giuliani raised the issue of him seemingly conducting American foreign policy in apparent violation of the Logan Act, which bars private citizens from negotiating with a foreign government on behalf of the U.S.
But no one has been convicted under the law, which dates back to 1799, and a potential case would likely be complicated by the fact that Giuliani was authorized by the president, the ex-prosecutors said.
“I’m of the view that this is probably less criminal than it is outrageous,” said a former prosecutor who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as publicly criticizing his one-time colleague.
Former federal prosecutor John Flannery, who worked with Giuliani in the mid-1970s, said he was taken aback by what he described as Giuliani’s flagrant abuse of the law.
“He’s put himself in a position of aiding and abetting, and perhaps initiating, an exchange of favors with a foreign government for an American political campaign at the behest of the candidate himself,” Flannery said. “Neither of them deny it, and in fact they’re profusely, repeatedly, painfully, admitting to it.”
Flannery said the Giuliani of today is nothing like the man he worked with some 40 years ago. “He’s a shadow of the best Rudy he was, and he’s not the great lawyer I thought he’d be,” said Flannery.
While many of the former prosecutors interviewed by NBC News expressed skepticism that the Justice Department would ever charge Giuliani, Flannery said he wasn’t so sure.
“Right now, it seems like we’re looking at a system where crimes we believed to have happened will not be prosecuted.” Flannery said. “But history teaches us that can turn around as quickly as the impeachment inquiry did this week.”
A Texas deputy who was gunned down during a traffic stop on Friday was remembered as a trailblazer — the first Sikh in his department when he joined 10 years ago.
Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal, 42, joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Office a decade ago, ushering in an accommodation policy in the department that allowed him to wear a turban and a beard, as is traditional in the religion.
“With our heavy hearts we regret to inform our community that one of members and Harris County Sheriff’s Office Sheriff Sandeep Dhaliwal was shot and killed while performing his duty. Please keep him and his family in your prayers,” the Sikh Officers Association wrote in a Facebook post.
Dhaliwal was slain when a gunman shot him in a “very ruthless, cold-blooded way” during a traffic stop at about 12:45 p.m. near Houston, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.
Dhaliwal had stopped a car in a cul-de-sac and talked with the driver for a few minutes in what appeared to be a routine car stop.
As Dhaliwal was walking back to his police car, the driver ran toward him from behind and shot him point blank in the back of the head, authorities said.
The driver then drove off, but was arrested by another cop nearby. His name was not immediately released.
Dhaliwal was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead, cops said.
“He was a hero. Deputy Dhaliwal was a trailblazer,” Sheriff Gonzalez said after the shooting.
“There are no words to speak to how heartbroken we are, how devastated,” he added.
Polls have opened in Afghanistan‘s presidential elections amid fears of violence following threats by the Taliban to disrupt the election process.
Security has been tightened across the country, with tens of thousands of troops and police deployed to guard polling stations and prevent attacks.
Early on Saturday, an explosion occurred near a polling station in the southern city of Kandahar, wounding at least 15 people.
The polls opened at 7am local time (2:30 GMT) and are scheduled to close at 5pm (12:3 GMT).
The presidential election is being contested by 14 candidates, with incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah seen as the top contenders.
The two men have shared power over the past five years in a so-called unity government formed by the United States in the wake of allegations of widespread fraud and corruption in the 2014 polls.
The Taliban, which has been waging a war demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country following its 2001 overthrow by US-led forces, has denounced the election as a “sham”.
On Thursday, the group urged Afghans to boycott the vote and threatened to attack security forces, block roads and target polling stations across the country.
“We ask fellow countrymen to refrain from venturing out of their homes on this day so that, may [God] forbid, no one is harmed,” it said in a statement.
The Taliban began peace negotiations with the US in October last year but earlier this month, following the conclusion of the ninth round of talks, US President Donald Trump dashed increased hopes of an agreement by abruptly declaring the discussions as “dead”.
‘A leader to end the war’
More than 72,000 security personnel have been deployed to 49,402 polling booths nationwide, while 410 polling centres will remain closed on Saturday over security concerns.
The threat of attacks has been on Afghan voters’ minds, but some said they are still determined to go out and vote.
“These elections are important to us because we want a leader who will negotiate peace with the Taliban and end the years-long war in the country,” Ismatullah Safi, a taxi driver in the capital, Kabul, told Al Jazeera.
In the lead-up to Saturday’s vote, the fragile security situation and the ailing economy appeared to dominate voters’ concerns.
Meanwhile, Abdullah, 59, has accused Ghani, 70, of abuse of power and using government resources in his election campaign – allegations Ghani denies.
According to the Independent Election Commission, 9.6 million Afghans, including some 3.3 million women, have registered to vote.
A presidential candidate must secure 50 percent of the vote to win outright. If no candidate crosses the threshold, a runoff will be held between the top two contenders – most likely on November 23.
Preliminary results are not expected before October 17, and the final results will be announced on November 7.
House Democrats said they will ramp up their impeachment effort next week against President Trump, and on Friday the chairmen of three powerful House committees subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to their investigation into whether the president improperly pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate his political rivals.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee have pledged to stay in Washington to work through Congress’s scheduled recess next week as Democrats seek to build a case for removing the president from office.
“I can tell you it’s going to be a very busy couple of weeks ahead,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters. “We’re going to be trying to schedule hearings, witness interviews. We’ll be working on subpoenas and document requests. We’ll be busy.”
The House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs panels also announced Friday that they have scheduled five depositions beginning with State Department officials who would have knowledge of Trump’s engagements with Ukraine.
Democrats are working against an unofficial deadline of the end of the year to completeimpeachment proceedings that currently focus on Trump’s request for “a favor” during a July telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The speaker has made it very clear that we are not to let momentum drop in these two weeks,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.).
Democrats are treating a whistleblower complaint surrounding Trump’s call with Zelensky as a “road map” for their probe, looking to the account of how White House officials were alarmed by the call and allegedly sought to improperly keep its contents secret.
At issue is Trump’spressing Zelensky on the call to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic presidential contender, and his son Hunter as well as an unsubstantiated theory that Ukrainians worked with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.
Hunter Biden served for nearly five years on the board of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest private gas company, whose owner came under scrutiny by Ukrainian prosecutors for possible abuse of power and unlawful enrichment. Hunter Biden was not accused of any wrongdoing in the investigation. As vice president, Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire the top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who Biden and other Western officials said was not sufficiently pursuing corruption cases. At the time, the investigation into Burisma was dormant, according to former Ukrainian and U.S. officials.
Trump spent Friday railing against the impeachment effort as a dangerous partisan “Witch Hunt!” while maintaining that he had said nothing wrong in his call with Zelensky.
“If that perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine Isn’t considered appropriate, then no future President can EVER again speak to another foreign leader!” he tweeted.
The president and his allies also continued to try to undermine the credibility of the whistleblower, whose identity has not been publicly released.
Trump speculated Friday morning on Twitter that the whistleblower might have received information from “a leaker or spy” or a “partisan operative.” He offered no evidence for his suggestions.
Trump’s reelection campaign announced Friday that it will launch a television ad “highlighting Joe Biden’s Ukraine scandal and the Democrats’ plan to use it to steal the 2020 election by impeaching the President.”
Republicans have mostly lined up to support Trump, echoing his claim that the call was “perfect” and that his willingness to release both a transcript of it and a version of the whistleblower complaint serve to show he has nothing to hide.
But there is unease, as suggested by a previously unreported intercession by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Two people familiar with the conversation said McConnell told the White House earlier this week that Trump needed to release the transcript of his call to bolster the claim that the conversation was not improper because the speculation about what happened was becoming politically untenable.
Neither the White House nor McConnell’s office provided comment on that communication.
Democrats’ inquiry, though on a tight schedule, is potentially broad. The whistleblower’s letter indicates that approximately a dozen White House officials listened in on the July call between Trump and Zelensky, and that “multiple” intelligence and diplomatic officials were briefed on its contents.
The complaint also highlights the role played by Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and the State Department officials who reportedly advised the Ukrainians on how to “navigate” Trump’s demands.
Lawmakers are seeking to depose or interview several of those officials and are also interested in learning what other transcripts of Trump’s communications might have been moved to a secure server for political protection, as the whistleblower alleges.
The subpoena issued Friday demands that Pompeo turn over by Oct. 4 documents pertaining to Trump’s dealings with Zelensky.
“Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) wrote in a joint letter to Pompeo.
In addition, the House Intelligence Committee will hold a closed briefing with the inspector general of the intelligence community Oct. 4. The IG conducted a preliminary investigation and determined that the whistleblower complaint was credible.
“We will move as expeditiously as possible, but we have to see what witnesses are going to make themselves available and what witnesses are going to require compulsion,” Schiff said Friday.
Among the State Department officials the committee is seeking to depose are Kurt Volker, a former ambassador who has worked for Pompeo as an envoy on Ukraine issues, and Marie Yovanovitch, a Foreign Service officer who this year was recalled early from her post as ambassador to Ukraine and has been criticized by Trump. Volker resigned from his State Department post Friday, as first reported by the State Press newspaper at Arizona State University.
The move by the House committee chairmen brought the State Department fully within Congress’s sights in the impeachment drama, a place that Pompeo has assiduously tried this week to avoid. In public appearances at the United Nations General Assembly, which he attended with Trump, Pompeo brushed aside reporters’ questions on the role the State Department played in the Ukraine affair. He is to leave Monday for a week-long diplomatic trip to Europe.
The committees demanded Pompeo’s appearance on Capitol Hill and listed questions they want answered about his knowledge of the activities of Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and whether the State Department assisted Giuliani in any way — as Giuliani has asserted — in pushing Trump’s demands with Ukrainian officials.
The chairmen also asked about the activities of Volker and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, both of whom met with Zelensky the day after the July telephone call.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), another member of the Intelligence Committee, said next steps will include speaking with the whistleblower, officials who listened in on the phone call and Giuliani.
“I think that we are going to want to interview people that were engaged in what is clearly a scheme. This is not a one-off. This is not just a phone call. This is a scheme that was hatched some time ago, and you can see evidence of it dating back to 2018,” Speier said. “And I want to see us come up with that timeline, because this is a truly corrupt undertaking.”
Separately, two powerful committees that oversee the federal budget and spending have requested from the White House a timeline and relevant documents that explain how the United States came to withhold almost $4oo million of military aid to Ukraine.
Central to the committees’ concerns are reports that the White House Office of Management and Budget was responsible for relaying to the State Department and the Pentagon the president’s order to hold back the aid to Ukraine.
“As reports continue to emerge, we have deepening concerns that OMB continues to demonstrate a pattern of impeding agencies’ ability to use their enacted appropriations,” wrote House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) and House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), in a joint letter to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and OMB acting director Russell Vought.
Karen DeYoung, Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner contributed to this report.
Kurt Volker, the US special representative for Ukraine negotiations, abruptly resigned Friday amid fallout over the whistleblower scandal, according to a report by Andrew Howard of the Arizona State Press. CNN subsequently confirmed the report.
It’s not yet clear whether Volker chose to step down or whether he was pushed out. But over the past day, he’s been the focus of intense scrutiny — first, because he was mentioned in the whistleblower complaint itself, and second, because President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani read out texts he’d received from Volker discussing Giuliani’s outreach to the Ukrainian government on live television.
Previously a career Foreign Service officer, Volker took up the unpaid, part-time diplomatic role as envoy to Ukraine in 2017. He was simultaneously advising a lobbying firm and serving as the executive director for the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University.
The whistleblower complaint, which describes Trump and Giuliani’s effort to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, characterizes Volker as involved in the back-and-forth between Giuliani and the Ukrainians — though the precise nature of his role isn’t clear.
For instance, one day after the now-infamous July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, Volker visited Kyiv and met with Zelensky and other Ukrainian political figures, according to the complaint.
At that meeting, Volker provided Ukrainian leaders with advice on how to “navigate” the demands for investigations that Trump had made of Zelensky during the call, the whistleblower writes. (The whistleblower’s source for this claim is “multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various US officials.”)
That might sound concerning — but Volker is mentioned again later in the complaint, where he is characterized positively. The whistleblower writes that, according to US officials, Volker spoke with Giuliani with the goal of trying to “contain the damage” to US national security that Giuliani was causing.
So while the complaint makes clear Volker was mixed up in all this, it’s unclear whether he was trying to help Trump and Giuliani achieve their goals, or whether he was struggling to clean up the mess they were making.
Volker has remained silent on the matter so far — but Giuliani has not. The former New York City mayor took to the airwaves and to Twitter Thursday and Friday to argue that he hadn’t gone rogue or attempted to undermine US policy with his Ukrainian outreach. Instead, he insisted, he undertook those actions at Volker’s request.
“Mr Mayor — really enjoyed breakfast this morning. As discussed, connecting you here with Andrey Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky,” one text from Volker dated July 19 reads. “I suggest we schedule a call together on Monday.”
The full context of their communications isn’t clear. But Volker will have the chance to tell his side of the story soon enough; House Democrats have scheduled a deposition of him for next week.
When the transcripts of two phone calls President Donald Trump had with foreign leaders leaked in the early days of his presidency, the procedure to store those logs changed, multiple sources familiar with the process told ABC News.
One former career intelligence official added that the administration “changed the dynamics of how these transcripts had been secured.”
The two calls in early 2017, with leaders from Australia and from Mexico, leaked early in Trump’s administration, and sources said the procedure to store them quickly changed — many calls between the president and world leaders instead were stored in a secure server to avoid leaks. The sources who talked to ABC News did caution that it’s unclear if the calls being stored were done so for national security or for political concerns.
One source said it became “basically standard operating procedure” for many of the conversations Trump has had during his time in office.
The sources would not specify if any countries were treated differently than others. Decisions on which calls were put into the server, according to sources, were handled by members of the NSC, State Department and White House Counsel’s office. The former career official said the measures taken seemed to solve the leak problem.
Evan Vucci/AP
President Donald Trump arrives to board Air Force One at John F. Kennedy Airport after attending the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 26, 2019, in New York.
This comes as the first of several joint depositions is set to take place on Capitol Hill next week involving various investigative committees that have begun an impeachment inquiry.
ABC News has learned, in a release from the house oversight committee, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who up until May 2019 served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, is slated to sit for a deposition on Oct. 2.
On Friday, Trump spent the day in back-to-back meetings at the White House with his top aides, including his communications team, members of the White House Counsel’s team and his personal counsel, sources told ABC News.
Despite that, Trump’s lead personal counsel, Jay Sekulow, told ABC News that, at this time, “No war room is being set up — we will respond appropriately.”
Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty Images, FILE
President Donald Trump signs a presidential memorandum at the White House in Washington D.C., on May 8, 2018, He said that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, a landmark agreement signed in 2015.
Some top aides believe the faster this moves the better it will be for Trump’s reelection. Privately, sources described a mixed bag, with a president who has been at times upbeat yet intent on ensuring no more leaks from the White House.
As part of Trump’s day of meetings, he met with NRA Chief Wayne La Pierre. According to sources familiar with the conversation, the meeting focused on gun control but also about how the NRA could support Trump as he faces impeachment.
“The NRA is not inclined to discuss private conversations with the president,” said Andrew Arulanandam, managing director of NRA Public Affairs. “The NRA categorically denies any discussion occurred about special arrangements pertaining to the NRA’s support of the president and vice versa.”
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel and Pete Madden contributed to this report.
Mr. Volker, a former career foreign service officer who represented President George W. Bush at NATO and now serves as executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University based in Washington, spent much of the year trying to bring Mr. Trump together with Mr. Zelensky to bolster the government elected earlier this year.
He argued to Trump administration officials that Mr. Zelensky was a credible reformer and serious figure who could be his country’s last chance to get its act together in the face of Russian aggression. With Mr. Trump openly expressing his disdain for Ukrainians — convinced that they were all corrupt and tried to take him down in 2016 — it was an uphill task.
After the Ukrainian inauguration, Mr. Trump agreed to meet with Mr. Zelensky but his staff kept delaying putting a date on the calendar. Like other officials, Mr. Volker was surprised to learn that Mr. Trump had ordered $391 million in aid to Ukraine frozen.
But he kept working to bring the two presidents together. Finally, the White House agreed to schedule a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky during the American president’s visit to Warsaw, only to scratch the meeting when Mr. Trump decided to stay home to monitor a hurricane.
Instead, Vice President Mike Pence, whose trip to Mr. Zelensky’s inauguration had been canceled to increase leverage on the Ukrainian government, according to the whistle-blower complaint, was sent to meet with Mr. Zelensky in Warsaw in his place.
Mr. Volker’s departure, which was first reported by the State Press, the student newspaper at Arizona State University, leaves the Trump administration with few senior officials versed in Ukraine’s struggles with Russia.
In recent months, the administration has lost John R. Bolton, the national security adviser; Fiona Hill, the top Europe official on the National Security Council staff; and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, all of whom sympathized with Ukraine in its struggle with Russia.
Moreover, the United States Embassy in Kiev is still without an ambassador after the administration yanked home Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who was targeted by the president and Mr. Giuliani for obstensibly being insufficiently loyal, a charge heatedly disputed by her colleagues.
(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, resigned on Friday, sources familiar with the situation said.
A whistleblower complaint from within the intelligence community, released publicly on Thursday, described Volker as trying to “contain the damage” from efforts by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats.
Volker, who had served in the position on a part-time, unpaid basis since 2017, had sought to help Ukraine’s government resolve its confrontation with Russia-sponsored separatists.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, who are conducting an impeachment investigation of Trump, have sought testimony from Volker relating to a July 25 phone call in which Trump encouraged Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden, a political rival.
Volker’s resignation was first reported by the State Press, a student-run publication at Arizona State University, which backs a think tank where Volker serves as executive director.
Reporting by Steve Holland and Bryan Pietsch; Editing by Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis
The Democratic chairmen of three powerful House committees on Friday subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to President Trump’s conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which he requested that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
In a letter to Pompeo, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings wrote that their three committees are investigating “the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression.”
As part of the House impeachment inquiry, the chairmen informed Pompeo that he was being subpoenaed produce the documents by October 4. Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday.
The chairmen had previously sent two letters requesting the documents from Pompeo, and he complied with neither.
The letter caps a tumultuous week in Washington which saw the Trump administration release a memorandum summarizing the call between Mr. Trump and Zelensky. The call was a subject of a whistleblower complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community and had initially been withheld from Congress by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. The complaint was released on Thursday, shortly before Maguire testified to the House Intelligence Committee.
The summary, which was not a verbatim transcript, showed that the president urged Zelensky to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to investigate the aspects of the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, as well as “the other thing” — Biden’s efforts in 2016 to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor widely seen by the West as corrupt.
Mr. Trump and Giuliani have alleged Biden acted to remove the prosecutor to protect his son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that had been under investigation. The whistleblower’s complaint noted Giuliani’s outreach to Ukrainian officials on this topic, citing information from press reports.
Giuliani told Fox News‘ Laura Ingraham that he didn’t act on his own — “I went to meet Mr. Zelinsky’s aide at the request of the State Department. Fifteen memos make that clear.”
The chairmen also sent a separate letter to Pompeo notifying him that the committees had scheduled depositions for former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, and U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland — all of whom were mentioned in the whistleblower complaint.
The comments, which have not been previously reported, were part of a now-infamous meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in which Trump revealed highly classified information that exposed a source of intelligence on the Islamic State. He also said during the meeting that firing FBI Director James B. Comey the previous day had relieved “great pressure” on him.
A memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to all but a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly, according to the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The White House’s classification of records about Trump’s communications with foreign officials is now a central part of the impeachment inquiry launched this week by House Democrats. An intelligence community whistleblower has alleged that the White House placed a record of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president, in which he offered U.S. assistance investigating his political opponents, into a code-word classified system reserved for the most sensitive intelligence information.
The White House did not provide a comment Friday.
It is not clear whether a memo documenting the May 10, 2017, meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak was placed into that system, but the three former officials said it was restricted to a very small number of people. The White House had recently begun limiting the records of Trump’s calls after remarks he made to the leaders of Mexico and Australia appeared in news reports. The Lavrov memo was restricted to an even smaller group, the former officials said.
A fourth former official, who did not recall the president’s remarks to the Russian officials, said memos were restricted only to people who needed to know their contents.
“It was more about learning how can we restrict this in a way that still informs the policy process and the principals who need to engage with these heads of state,” the fourth former official said.
But the three former officials with knowledge of the remarks said some memos of the president’s communications were kept from people who might ordinarily have access to them. The Lavrov memo fit that description, they said.
White House officials were particularly distressed by Trump’s election remarks because it appeared the president was forgiving Russia for an attack that had been designed to help elect him, the three former officials said. Trump also seemed to invite Russia to interfere in other countries’ elections, they said.
The previous day, Trump had fired Comey amid the FBI’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia. White House aides worried about the political ramifications if Trump’s comments to the Russian officials became public.
Trump had publicly ridiculed the Russia investigation as politically motivated and said he doubted Moscow had intervened in the election. By the time he met with Lavrov and Kislyak, Trump had been briefed by the most senior U.S. intelligence officials about the Russian operation, which was directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and included the theft and publication of Democratic emails and the seeded of propaganda in social-media, according to the findings of the U.S. intelligence community.
Trump’s firing of Comey touched off an investigation into whether the president had tried to obstruct the FBI’s probe. His comments about Comey’s dismissal being a relief, which were first reported the same month by the New York Times, reinforced suspicions that Trump dismissed Comey because the FBI was investigating him.
According to the fourth former official, Trump lamented to Lavrov that “all this Russia stuff” was detrimental to good relations. Trump also complained, “I could have a great relationship with you guys, but you know, our press,” this former official said, characterizing the president’s remarks.
H.R. McMaster, the president’s then-national security adviser, repeatedly told Trump he could not trust the Russians, according to two former officials.
On some areas, Trump conveyed U.S. policy in a constructive way, such as telling the Russians that their aggression in Ukraine was not good, one of those former officials said.
“What was difficult to understand was how they got a free pass on a lot of things — election security and so forth,” this former official said. “He was just very accommodating to them.”
The former official observed that Trump has “that streak of moral equivalency,” recalling how he once dismissed a question about the assassination of journalists and dissidents in Putin’s Russia by telling Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Another former official said Trump wasn’t the only one to conflate Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections with U.S. efforts to promote democracy and good governance abroad.
The president and his top aides seemed not to understand the difference between Voice of America, a U.S.-supported news organization that airs in foreign countries, with Russian efforts to persuade American voters by surreptitiously planting ads in social media, this person said.
One former senior official said Trump regularly defended Russia’s actions, even in private, saying no country is pure. “He was always defensive of Russia,” this person said, adding the president had never made such a specific remark about interference in their presence.
“He thought the whole interference thing was ridiculous. He never bought into it.”
WASHINGTON — House Democrats, kick-starting their impeachment inquiry into President Trump, subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, demanding he produce a tranche of documents related to the president’s dealings with Ukraine. Separately, they instructed him to make five State Department officials available for depositions in the coming two weeks.
A failure to do so, the leaders of three House committees wrote jointly, would be construed as “evidence of obstruction of the House’s inquiry” — an offense Democrats have made clear they view as grounds for impeachment.
It was the first major action in the rapidly escalating impeachment investigation, which began this week amid revelations that Mr. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate a leading political rival, possibly using United States aid as leverage. It came as House Democrats planned an aggressive pace for their inquiry, eyeing their first hearing on the matter as early as next week.
The Intelligence Committee has also scheduled a private briefing for next Friday with Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general, who first attempted to share a whistle-blower complaint outlining the matter with Congress, according to a committee official.
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