Here’s what you need to know to understand the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

What’s happening now: The House Intelligence Committee has begun writing a report summarizing its findings in the impeachment inquiry.

The committee held public impeachment hearings Nov. 19-21, with multiple officials appearing for questioning.

This followed closed-door hearings and subpoenaed documents related to the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

What happens next: Once the report is completed, proceedings move to the House Judiciary Committee, which could draft specific articles of impeachment, possibly as soon as lawmakers return from the Thanksgiving recess. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.

How we got here: On the heels of a complaint from a whistleblower, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the beginning of an official impeachment inquiry against President Trump on Sept. 24. Here’s what has happened since then.

Stay informed: Read the latest reporting and analysis on the impeachment inquiry here.

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Listen: Follow The Post’s coverage with daily updates from across our podcasts.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-gop-support-hardens-despite-damning-impeachment-testimony/2019/11/23/b1625d6c-0d6f-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html

President Trump’s personal attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Saturday that he is not afraid of being indicted and that he has absolutely no business interest in Ukraine.

Appearing on “America’s News HQ” with host Ed Henry, Giuliani said that the “case has been really simple from the day that Joe Biden confessed to committing bribery in 2018.”

“Although, he said precisely what was attributed to President Trump a year and a half later…Basically, they’ll prove that he committed bribery,” he said during the wide-ranging interview.

GIULIANI-POMPEO CONTACTS BEFORE YOVANOVITCH OUSTER ARE SEEN IN NEWLY RELEASED STATE DEPT. DOCUMENTS

Giuliani said that the “reality is you’d have to be a fool” to think Biden “didn’t know that his son was under investigation.” The founder of the company Hunter Biden worked for is currently under investigation, but there is no evidence he himself is being investigated.

In an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday, Biden said that he is “embarrassed” for his former Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., over his request for documents pertaining to Hunter Biden’s time on the board of natural gas company Burisma Holdings and Ukraine.

Biden’s remarks drew a response on Twitter from Giuliani who wrote that Biden’s comments amounted to “a threat to a U.S. Senator,” and reminded the former federal prosecutor of “my old mafia cases.”

BIDEN FUMES AT GRAHAM OVER REQUEST FOR DOCUMENTS ON SON; GIULIANI BLASTS ‘THREAT TO A US SENATOR’

Giuliani told Henry that Biden sounded like a “poor imitation of ‘The Godfather,'” adding that Biden wanted to fight with the president “every other week.”

“I don’t care what he said. He’s lying. He’s been lying all his life,” Giuliani told Henry. “Every place that Joe Biden was a point man…the Biden family came away with millions. And nobody wants to look at it because the Washington press corps protects him.”

However, Giuliani’s former associate Lev Parnas — who pleaded not guilty to federal campaign finance violations earlier this month — is now claiming that he traveled to Kiev shortly before the inauguration of Zelensky to demand the new administration publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens.

Parnas’ lawyer confirmed to Fox News that his client told Ukrainian officials that Vice President Mike Pence would not attend the swearing-in of the new president and the United States would freeze aid to the Eastern European nation if the demands were not met.

The claim by Parnas, who has been preparing to testify in the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump, directly challenged the accounts by Trump and Ukrainian officials that have been at the heart of the congressional probe.

Giuliani said that the lawyer’s comments are untrue and that Parnas is “trying to make himself very important.”

“We never had that meeting with the president,” he said, adding that Parnas “got himself into a grandiose thing” and he could potentially “make himself into another Michael Cohen.”

GIULIANI ASSOCIATE TOLD UKRAINIANS TO INVESTIGATE BIDEN, LAWYER SAYS

Giuliani also denied a recent Wall Street Journal report stating that he would personally profit from a natural gas pipeline in Ukraine was false and that he was “not going to financially profit from anything that [he] knows of in the Ukraine.”

“I can’t keep up from the amount of false information printed about me,” he exclaimed.

“Are you afraid, Mr. Mayor, that you could be indicted?” asked Henry.

“You think I’m afraid?” Giuliani shot back. “I did the right thing.”

He said that he has absolutely no “business interest” in Ukraine, and that it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who had first brought him up in his July phone call with President Trump because of his “reputation.”

Giuliani said that he wanted to “exculpate” his client.

“This is ridiculous. [The President] know what I did was order to defend the president — not to dig up dirt on Biden. This goes back a year ago before Biden [had] even decided to run for president,” he said.

“My thought when I began investigating this was to get evidence that will help my client prove that the charges against him aren’t true,” Giuliani said.

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He predicted that “they’re ultimately going to prove” that this was a conspiracy to frame the president in which high-level Democrats and White House staff participated.

Fox News’ Charles Creitz, Andrew O’Reilly, and John Roberts contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/rudy-giuliani-donald-trump-indicted-joe-biden-liar

Fiona Hill, former Russia expert on the National Security Council, said Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pitched conspiracy theories she says the president considered senior officials’ advice.

#ABCNews #ImpeachmentHearings #Trump #FionaHill #Giuliani

Source Article from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUtXCgUAQU

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Source Article from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-22/irs-says-millionaires-can-keep-estate-tax-benefits-after-2025

Anti-government protesters rally on Friday in Bogotá, the second day of their protests against President Iván Duque, who is trying to get a grip on the unrest by announcing a “national dialogue.”

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Anti-government protesters rally on Friday in Bogotá, the second day of their protests against President Iván Duque, who is trying to get a grip on the unrest by announcing a “national dialogue.”

Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Colombians have rallied against their leader, President Iván Duque, in a major wave of protests. Duque is trying to get a grip on the unrest by announcing a “national dialogue,” and the capital city, Bogotá, was put under curfew Friday night.

Major rallies started in Colombia on Thursday. As reporter John Otis tells NPR from Colombia, the demonstrators are “angry over a great big long list of issues.”

“They think President Duque hasn’t supported Colombia’s peace treaty, which ended a long guerrilla war back in 2016. They also are calling for more protection for human rights workers, hundreds of whom have been targeted and killed by criminal gangs,” Otis reported. “And they’re also worried that the government is going to cut salaries and pension benefits.”

Duque, a right-wing populist, was elected last year on a platform of changing the terms of the 2016 peace deal with guerrilla fighters. He’s faced challenges since coming into office, though, and his approval rating is now hovering at around 26%, according to The Associated Press.

Late Friday, a truck bomb exploded near a police station in the province of Cauca, Otis reports. Thirteen policemen were rushed to the hospital, and officials said three of them died. It wasn’t immediately clear who is responsible for the bombing or whether it is connected to the ongoing rallies.

The protests have been largely peaceful. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in the streets across the country on Thursday, according to the BBC. Protesters again gathered on Friday in a historic district of Bogotá — then police fired tear gas at the crowd.

“They kicked us out with tear gas,” protester Rogelio Martinez told AP. “They didn’t want the people to show their discontent.”

There have been reports of looting. As Otis reports, criminals commandeered a bus and crashed it through the doors of a supermarket on Friday, and the shelves were cleaned out.

Officials said that during the demonstrations Thursday and Friday, 146 people were detained, according to AP. At least 151 security forces and 122 civilians were injured, “most of whom suffered minor injuries and tear gas inhalation.”

Six people have been killed, Otis reports.

In televised remarks on Friday, Duque said that “from next week I will start a national conversation that will strengthen the current agenda of social policies.” He said that some people were using the rallies to “sow chaos.”

Demonstrations are picking up in Colombia at the same time as a wave of protests have swept across Latin America in Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia.

But as Otis notes, such demonstrations are considered unusual in Colombia. “These protests here have caught people a little bit by surprise, because Colombia has always been a very institution country,” he says. “Despite guerrilla wars and cocaine, drug-related violence, there’s been a lot of government stability and economic stability.”

To put this in perspective, Friday night’s curfew in Bogotá was the first of its kind there in 43 years.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/11/23/782279678/amid-protests-colombias-capital-placed-under-curfew

Documents released late Friday by the State Department show how Rudy Giuliani was in contact with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weeks before the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was unceremoniously ousted from the post. The documents were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by American Oversight and show a “clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador,” said the group’s executive director, Austin Evers. American Oversight describes itself as a “non-partisan, nonprofit ethics watchdog” that is “the top Freedom of Information Act litigator investigating the Trump administration.”

The documents, which American Oversight published on its website, show there were two calls between Giuliani and Pompeo in March. That was a month before then–U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was suddenly recalled to the United States before being removed from her post in May. Giuliani and Pompeo talked on March 26 and March 29. Also interesting is an email from March 27 that shows how Trump’s former personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout played a role in helping the two men connect after Giuliani’s people had “been trying and getting nowhere through regular channels.”

Although the documents don’t reveal what Giuliani and Pompeo talked about in the conversations, which only lasted a few minutes, they do appear to support the testimony of several witnesses in the impeachment probe who said the two spoke on efforts to try to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. On Wednesday, for example, David Hale, undersecretary of state for political affairs, testified that Pompeo and Giuliani spoke on the phone twice in late March. The documents also appear to support the testimony by Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, that senior White House officials were well aware of what Giuliani was doing with Ukraine.

The date of the second call between the president’s lawyer and Pompeo also raised eyebrows because Giuliani had previously said he handed documents containing allegations against Biden “directly to the Secretary of State” on March 28, 2019. The new documents also show Pompeo spoke with Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee two days after the March 29 call with Giuliani.

American Oversight said the fact that it was able to obtain these documents through a FOIA request shows how lawmakers should be able to get them as well:

That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress. That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice. The president and his allies should ask themselves if impeachment for obstruction is worth it if the strategy isn’t even going to be effective.

Beyond the Giuliani-Pompeo contacts, the documents also show that before Bill Taylor took on the job as acting U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine he was one of six former Ukraine ambassadors to object to “recent uncorroborated allegations” about Yovanovitch. In his testimony to Congress, Taylor said that one of the reasons he hesitated to take on the job was because of the way Yovanovitch was treated.

Source Article from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/documents-giuliani-pompeo-contacts-ukraine-ambassador-ouster.amp

While polls before the hearings showed that 49 percent favored impeachment versus 47 percent who opposed it, a survey by Yahoo News and YouGov at the end of the hearings found support for impeachment at 48 percent and opposition at 45 percent. Other polls may eventually show movement but, at first blush, the drama of hearing the evidence presented out loud by real witnesses with evident credibility did not noticeably shift the overall dynamics.

Democrats and Republicans alike privately agreed that it looked unlikely that even a single Republican would vote for impeachment when it reaches the House floor. In the Senate, Republican strategists said they believed they might lose two senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — while Democratic strategists said they also might lose two — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“We’ve just had this partisan divide ever since the Clinton years,” said former Representative Barbara J. Comstock, Republican of Virginia. “Whether it was Supreme Court nominations or this, it’s just become a team sport, shirts and skins, no matter what the issues are.”

Steve Elmendorf, the top aide to the House Democratic leader when Mr. Clinton was impeached, agreed that lawmakers appear locked into their positions. “Except,” he cautioned, “we are in the Trump show, where anything can happen. Two months ago, we did not think he was going to be impeached over a phone call we knew little about.”

Among the wild cards that could still change the dynamics might be testimony by some of the key witnesses who so far have refused to talk, including John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser who opposed the pressure campaign and is waiting for a court ruling on whether he should appear.

Mr. Trump has long argued that an impeachment battle would help him politically by galvanizing his base against the elites trying to invalidate the 2016 election. While he has refused to provide testimony or documents to the House, arguing that the process is rigged against him, he is taking his case instead to evening rallies in sports arenas filled with supporters.

Mr. Trump and his allies took heart from a Marquette University Law School poll showing him with small leads against each of the Democratic front-runners among voters in Wisconsin, one of the most critical battleground states for 2020. That poll, taken during the first week of hearings, showed that support for impeachment in the state had slipped by four percentage points to 40 percent.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/us/politics/trump-impeachment-voters.html

The former national security adviser John Bolton acknowledged intense speculation “about what I plan to do next” in a tweet on Saturday morning, but to the disappointment of many did not follow up by saying he would testify in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.

Instead, the moustachioed Bush veteran and foreign policy hawk linked to his own political action committee, John Bolton Pac, which seeks “to identify and support Senate and House candidates committed to policies promoting a strong America”.

Reaction was predictably downbeat, the writer Molly Jong Fast responding: “Testify, testify, testify.”

The former ambassador to the UN and Fox News contributor became the president’s third national security adviser in April 2018. He left the White House in September this year amid a dispute over whether he resigned or was shown the door.

His name has been frequently raised in testimony in the impeachment inquiry, as a senior official apparently appalled by Trump’s moves to pressure Ukraine into investigating unfounded allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his son Hunter and a baseless conspiracy theory which seeks to shift blame for Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The former Russia adviser Fiona Hill said Bolton characterised the attempts as a “drug deal” cooked up in part by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who she said Bolton called “a hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up”.

It has been reported that Bolton played a key role in freeing part of nearly $400m in security aid to Kyiv which was being held as bait. Furthermore, Bolton’s lawyer has said he has “personal knowledge” of meetings and conversations “that have not yet been discussed in testimonies thus far”.

But Bolton has nonetheless asked a judge to decide if he should comply with House Democrats and testify, a move largely seen as an effective means of delay.

Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the EU, remains the most senior Trump appointee to have testified – damningly for the president, most observers agreed.

Bolton has reportedly signed a book deal worth $2m, prompting suggestions that he intends to save his revelations for the commercial market.

On Friday Bolton returned to Twitter after a two-month silence, claiming to have “liberated” his account after it was “suppressed unfairly in the aftermath of my resignation”.

“The White House,” he claimed, “refused to return access to my personal Twitter account. Out of fear of what I may say? To those who speculated I went into hiding, I’m sorry to disappoint!”

He seemed to be enjoying trolling those who want him to speak to the House intelligence committee, claiming his tweets represented “full disclosure” and adding on Saturday: “The presidency and control of the House and the Senate will all be decided in less than one year. It’s time to speak up again!”

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/23/john-bolton-impeachment-inquiry-pac

At least one student who was arrested, a 17-year-old in Riverside, Calif., was found with ammunition, according to police. Another teenager was arrested after posting pictures of himself on social media posing with a gun and bullets and talking about a possible attack at a high school in Palmdale, Calif., police said.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/23/teen-arrested-la-school-shooting-threat-had-list-students-access-ar-police-say/

The mother of a Navy veteran is seeking answers after her son’s body was discovered in his Texas apartment where officials said he had been dead for three years.

The remains of Ronald Wayne White, 54, were recovered Nov. 12, from the DeSoto Town Center Apartments in suburban Dallas.

White had been dead “for an extended period of time, up to when he was last known alive three years ago,” the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a statement.

White’s mother, Doris Stevens, said she last spoke to her son in November 2016. White was a defense contractor and traveled the world in that role, she said.

Stevens told NBC News Friday that her son had stayed in the United States to vote in the 2016 presidential election and had planned to go to the Philippines, where he had bought a home. White retired from the Navy as a senior chief petty officer in 2004, his mother said.

Ronald Wayne White.Courtesy Doris Stevens

White, who was single and had been divorced about 20 years, had recently sold his house in Glenn Heights, approximately 20 miles from Dallas, according to his mother.

Stevens, 70, said she grew concerned about her son in February 2017, as the two never went months without speaking. If he was in the United States, they would speak at least once a week and if he was out of the country, he would check in with her once or twice a month, she said.

By April 2017, when she could not reach him on his birthday, she said she knew something was wrong. Voicemail messages to his phone went unanswered, she said.

Stevens said she called the Glenn Heights and Dallas police departments to file a missing person report.

“They asked how old my son was and I told them and they said, ‘You can’t make a missing person report for a grown up,'” she said.

Neither department responded to requests for an interview Friday.

She said she knew that was untrue so she traveled from her home in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Dallas and visited both police departments multiple times.

“They didn’t give me no kind of consideration,” Stevens said through tears. She did not know her son had an apartment in DeSoto, otherwise she said she would have tried to access it.

Stevens, who lives on a fixed income, said she then tried unsuccessfully to convince her family members to pool money to hire a private investigator who could inquire with the State Department when her son’s passport was last used and to look into his financial activity.

Last week, she said she received a call from one of her son’s adult children informing her White was dead.

Stevens said she traveled last week to Dallas to visit the medical examiner’s office. She said she asked the medical examiner how long her son had been dead. When he told her three years, she said her knees gave way.

“I lost control of my body,” she said.

The medical examiner’s office said a cause of death is not yet known and an autopsy with toxicology results can take up to 90 days.

Stevens said she will not stop digging until she knows what happened to her son. She believes the rental community where he lived is partly to blame for his body going undiscovered for as long as it did.

The DeSoto Town Center said in a statement Friday that White was frequently out of the country, and his bills were paid through automatic withdrawals from his account.

“Our maintenance personnel discovered his body when they identified and responded to a service issue at his apartment,” the statement said. “We are cooperating with the police as they investigate this incident.”

Stevens does not believe her son died of natural causes.

“It’s just something weighing heavy on my heart,” she said. “You’re not supposed to bury your children.”

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/navy-veteran-found-his-apartment-had-been-dead-3-years-n1089856

Two GOP Senate chairmen are asking for the Treasury Department to hand over any documents related to Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian energy company amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry against President TrumpDonald John TrumpApple CEO Tim Cook promises to fight for DACA, user privacy DOJ urges Supreme Court to side with Trump in ongoing legal battle over tax returns Giuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report MORE.

In a letter dated Nov. 15, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck GrassleyCharles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleyTrump says drug importation plan coming ‘soon’ The Hill’s Morning Report — Schiff: Clear evidence of a quid pro quo Trump steps up GOP charm offensive as impeachment looms MORE (R-Iowa) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron JohnsonRonald (Ron) Harold JohnsonGOP senator opposes quick dismissal of Trump articles of impeachment Graham requests State Department documents on Bidens, Ukraine House GOP wants Senate Republicans to do more on impeachment MORE (R-Wis.) asked for “suspicious activity reports” involving former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenGiuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report Yang slams lack of speaking time during debate Biden on Bloomberg entering 2020 race: ‘I welcome the competition’ MORE‘s son, Reuters reported Friday.

The documents do not include findings about any illegal activity itself but are filed by financial institutions when money laundering or fraud is suspected. It is unknown if any such reports exist involving Hunter Biden, and the GOP letter did not include any evidence that Hunter Biden engaged in any activity that would be covered in such reports, according to Reuters.

Hunter Biden has denied any wrongdoing involving his work for the Ukrainian company, Burisma Holdings, which President Trump and his Republican allies have targeted. Trump has claimed without evidence that Joe Biden pushed for Ukraine to fire a prosecutor due to his son’s business interests, though both have denied such allegations.

The GOP senators said Burisma was paying Hunter Biden as much as $50,000 a month and that their committees were investigating “potentially improper actions by the Obama administration with respect to Burisma Holdings and Ukraine,” according to Reuters.

The two chairmen previously asked the State Department for documents related to Hunter Biden and Burisma. The lawmakers gave the Treasury Department a Dec. 5 deadline for the information requested on Friday.

The letter comes as House Democrats continue their impeachment inquiry into Trump over his dealings with Ukraine, with the probe centered on the president’s efforts to get the country to launch politically charged investigations, including a probe into the Bidens.

Democrats have blasted Trump over the efforts targeting Joe Biden, who is a top political rival and a front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

As the House held public hearings over the past two weeks to hear from current and former administration witnesses in the inquiry, GOP lawmakers have aimed to shift gears and focus instead on unsubstantiated allegations involving Hunter Biden in Ukraine.

Joe Biden’s campaign told Reuters that the request means “Trump is now counting on his Republican enablers in the Senate to bail him out.”

“Driven by fear of a mean tweet, they are falling in line, peddling the same disproven lies we’ve heard for months,” campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/471771-gop-senators-ask-treasury-for-financial-reports-on-hunter-biden

Updated 8:05 AM ET, Sat November 23, 2019

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Washington (CNN)Here’s the reality.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/23/politics/ukraine-meddling-debunked-conspiracy-theory/index.html

The attorney for an indicted associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer says his client is willing to tell Congress that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., met with Ukraine’s former top prosecutor about investigating the activities of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

An impeachment inquiry is being conducted over allegations Trump held up aid to Ukraine to encourage its leaders to launch an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked as an energy executive in that country.

As vice president, Joe Biden joined a chorus of global pressure for Ukraine to fire then-state prosecutor Victor Shokin.

Trump and Nunes, his chief defender as a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee that has taken a lead role in the impeachment inquiry, say Joe Biden wanted Shokin out to protect his son when Hunter Biden’s employer, Burisma, was under suspicion.

Shokin himself claims he was fired at the behest of the former vice president to ease pressure on Burisma and Hunter Biden.

Joseph A. Bondy, an attorney for Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed that his client was willing to testify before Congress that Nunes met with Shokin.

“I can confirm that Victor Shokin told Lev Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in late 2018, and that Derek Harvey informed that they were investigating the activities of Joe and Hunter Biden related to Burisma,” Bondy told NBC News.

Derek Harvey is Nunes’ investigator.

The story of the offer of testimony was first reported by CNN Friday night. On Wednesday, the Daily Beast reported that Parnas himself helped to arrange meetings in Europe last year for Nunes.

Nunes has been one of the president’s most ardent supporters as he faces impeachment proceedings.

NBC News reached out to Nunes and to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-California, but neither responded immediately.

In a statement to Breitbart News on Friday night, Nunes called the CNN and Daily Beast reports “demonstrably false and scandalous.”

Parnas was indicted last month for allegedly making illegal campaign contributions. He pleaded not guilty while expressing willingness to cooperate with impeachment investigators.

State Department officials have testified that Giuliani ran his own influence campaign in Ukraine on behalf of the president, and often outside customary diplomatic channels, in an effort to get the country’s leaders to launch an investigation into the Bidens.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/giuliani-associate-willing-testify-nunes-met-ex-ukranian-official-attorney-n1090081

Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican member on the House Intelligence Committee, is reportedly threatening to sue CNN and The Daily Beast after the publications reported damaging allegations that could implicate him in the ongoing impeachment probe the committee is currently conducting.

Nunes—who has been one of President Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders in the committee where Ukrainian “quid pro quo” allegations are currently being considered—faced calls to recuse himself and even to be investigated after it was alleged that he himself met with Ukrainian officials in order to discuss digging up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

If accurate, the claim would implicate Nunes in the events his committee is investigating: president Trump and associates allegedly attempting to enlist a foreign government to dig up dirt on a domestic political opponent, while Congressionally approved aid was withheld until the request was met.

The allegations came from lawyers for Lev Parnas—a Ukrainian-born American who worked as a “fixer” for Rudy Giuliani before being indicted on charges of using foreign money to make illicit campaign contributions.

The lawyers, Joseph Bondy and Ed MacMahon, told CNN and The Daily Beast that Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings with various Ukrainian officials, including ousted Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin, during a secret trip to Vienna in December 2018.

Nunes told Breitbart News that he now plans to sue the publications, although he did not specify what was he believed to be factually incorrect with any of their reporting.

“These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by The Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth,” Nunes said.

“Some political operative offered these fake stories to at least five different media outlets before finding someone irresponsible enough to publish them.

“I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets, as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law.

“I intend to hold The Daily Beast and CNN accountable for their actions. They will find themselves in court soon after Thanksgiving.”

Nunes did not offer any further detail, such as the identity of the political operative shopping the story or the media outlets that rejected them. The CNN and The Daily Beast both noted in their reports that Nunes ignored repeated requests for comment.

The lawyers for Parnas have earlier confirmed that their client was willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry.

On Twitter, Bondy suggested that Parnas was already in conversation with the House Intelligence Committee, but this is yet to be indepently confirmed.

Bondy also said that Parnas had “hard” evidence that proved he met with Trump in order to directly discuss the desired Ukrainian investigations into Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump has denied meeting or knowing Parnas—a tactic he commonly appeared to use when staff or contacts become politically inconvenient—although pictures showed them at the White House together.

p:last-of-type::after, .node-type-slideshow .article-body > p:last-of-type::after {
content: none
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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/parnas-lawyers-nunes-ukraine-officials-meeting-lawsuit-1473679

An indicted associate of Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiGiuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report Democrats set to open new chapter in impeachment Igor Fruman says he made 0,000 in political donations to ‘jump-start his business’ MORE, President TrumpDonald John TrumpApple CEO Tim Cook promises to fight for DACA, user privacy DOJ urges Supreme Court to side with Trump in ongoing legal battle over tax returns Giuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report MORE‘s personal lawyer, is willing to inform Congress about a meeting between the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and a former Ukrainian prosecutor.

Joseph A. Bondy, the attorney for Lev Parnas, told CNN that the Ukrainian official told his client about the meeting with Rep. Devin NunesDevin Gerald NunesGiuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report The Hill’s Morning Report — Schiff: Clear evidence of a quid pro quo Hill, Holmes offer damaging impeachment testimony: Five takeaways MORE (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, in which the GOP lawmaker sought to find dirt on former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenGiuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report Yang slams lack of speaking time during debate Biden on Bloomberg entering 2020 race: ‘I welcome the competition’ MORE

“Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December,” Bondy said.

Shokin was dismissed from his post in 2016 after a pressure campaign from Western leaders, including Biden, over concerns that he was taking insufficient action to tackle corruption.

Nunes is one of the White House’s chief allies on Capitol Hill and emerged as one of the most vocal defenders of President Trump during the impeachment hearing, which he dubbed a “circus.” 

Nunes’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

Bondy told CNN that Parnas put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians to help Nunes get damaging information on Biden, one of the president’s chief political rivals. 

Giuliani has previously discussed his conversations with Shokin and Parnas as part of his work on behalf of the president. However, Bondy’s discussions with CNN mark the first time Nunes has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden. 

Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, have been thrust to the heart of the House’s impeachment investigation into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

The two were allegedly involved in a shadow campaign to help oust former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie YovanovitchMarie YovanovitchGiuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report Trump says people went easy on Yovanovitch because she’s a woman Hill says Soros conspiracy theories are ‘new Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ MORE, whom they viewed as an obstacle they needed to remove in order to pave the way for Giuliani’s push for politically beneficial investigations by Kyiv.

Parnas and Fruman were indicted in connection with an alleged campaign finance fraud scheme in which they planned to use a shell company to donate money to a pro-Trump election committee. Parnas has indicated that he will cooperate with the House’s impeachment investigation.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/471768-giuliani-associate-willing-to-inform-congress-of-meeting-between-nunes-and

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/23/politics/impeachment-watch-november-22/index.html

The attorney for an indicted associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer says his client is willing to tell Congress that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, met with Ukraine’s former top prosecutor about investigating the activities of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

An impeachment inquiry is being conducted over allegations Trump held up aid to Ukraine to encourage its leaders to launch an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked as an energy executive in that country. As vice president, Joe Biden joined a chorus of global pressure for Ukraine to fire then-state prosecutor Victor Shokin.

Trump and Nunes, his chief defender as a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee that has taken a lead role in the impeachment inquiry, say Joe Biden wanted Shokin out to protect his son when Hunter Biden’s employer, Burisma, was under suspicion.

Shokin himself claims he was fired at the behest of the former vice president to ease pressure on Burisma and Hunter Biden.

Joseph A. Bondy, an attorney for Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed that his client was willing to testify before Congress that Nunes met with Shokin.

“I can confirm that Victor Shokin told Lev Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in late 2018, and that Derek Harvey informed that they were investigating the activities of Joe and Hunter Biden related to Burisma,” Bondy told NBC News.

Derek Harvey is Nunes’ investigator.

The story of the offer of testimony was first reported by CNN Friday night. On Wednesday, the Daily Beast reported that Parnas himself helped to arrange meetings in Europe last year for Nunes.

Nunes has been one of the president’s most ardent supporters as he faces impeachment proceedings.

NBC News reached out to Nunes and to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-California, but neither responded immediately.

In a statement to Breitbart News on Friday night, Nunes called the CNN and Daily Beast reports “demonstrably false and scandalous.”

Parnas was indicted last month for allegedly making illegal campaign contributions. He pleaded not guilty while expressing willingness to cooperate with impeachment investigators.

State Department officials have testified that Giuliani ran his own influence campaign in Ukraine on behalf of the president, and often outside customary diplomatic channels, in an effort to get the country’s leaders to launch an investigation into the Bidens.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/giuliani-associate-willing-testify-nunes-met-ex-ukranian-official-attorney-n1090081

Former Vice President Joe Biden said that Sen. Lindsey Graham “is about to go down” in reaction to the South Carolina Republican’s request for documents from the State Department related to Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Biden said that he was “embarrassed” for Graham in an interview with CNN on Friday, and said that President Donald Trump is “holding power” over Graham.

“They have him under their thumb right now. They know he knows, if he comes out against Trump, he’s got a real tough road for re-election,” Biden said. 

Graham, the Senate Judiciary chairman, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Thursday requesting documentation in the possession of the State Department about Biden’s communications with Ukraine’s former president, and about an alleged business meeting between a Hunter Biden associate and the former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/11/22/joe-biden-reacts-lindsey-graham-supporting-trump-amid-impeachment/4277666002/

A Justice Department watchdog is expected to strongly criticize FBI officials for being careless in their pursuit of obtaining wiretaps on a former Trump campaign aide during the start of the Russia probe, but not find they were acting with a bias toward President TrumpDonald John TrumpApple CEO Tim Cook promises to fight for DACA, user privacy DOJ urges Supreme Court to side with Trump in ongoing legal battle over tax returns Giuliani associate willing to inform Congress of meeting between Nunes and former Ukrainian official: report MORE, The New York Times reported Friday afternoon.

But the highly anticipated report from the Department of Justice inspector general (IG) is also expected to say top agency leaders did not act with a bias toward against President Trump in terms of how they undertook the probe.

In particular, the DOJ IG, Michael Horowitz, faulted Kevin Clinesmith, a lower-level lawyer, for altering an email that bureau officials then incorporated in their effort to renew a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Carter Page. 

The DOJ watchdog has referred his findings about Clinesmith, who resigned two months ago, to prosecutors for a potential criminal charge, the Times reported.

Horowitz also reportedly found omissions and errors in documents seeking the wiretap for Page, who had served previously on the Trump campaign and was suspected of working as an unregistered foreign agent in 2016.

And while the Times reports that Horowitz will sharply rebuke the top brass at the FBI over their handling of the counterintelligence probe — which was examining whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia— his investigation did not find that anti-Trump bias among senior leaders like former FBI director James ComeyJames Brien ComeyDOJ watchdog expected to say FBI erred, but absolve top leaders of anti-Trump bias: report Trump predicts ‘historic’ conclusions from DOJ’s watchdog report on ‘spying’ 3 reasons why impeachment fatigue has already set in MORE, deputy director Andrew McCabeAndrew George McCabeDOJ watchdog expected to say FBI erred, but absolve top leaders of anti-Trump bias: report CNN’s McCabe restricted from talking about DOJ IG report The curious timeline for taking down Trump MORE, and former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok influenced the investigation.

While the report, set to be publicly released Dec. 9, appears to confirm long-held GOP allegations that officials did not follow the proper protocols in obtaining the Page FISA warrant, the report also disputes their allegations that individuals like Comey, McCabe and Strzok acted on biases towards the president.

Horowitz’s report also debunks claims that the so-called Steele dossier compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele was used by officials to launch the investigation, as well as allegations that some of the information came from the CIA officials.

Democrats and Republicans are likely to seize on different parts of the report, particularly at a time when House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is looming over the Trump administration. 

The FBI obtained a FISA warrant on Page in October of 2016 and renewed the wiretap three subsequent times.

And during one of those renewal processes, Clinesmith is said to have altered an email from an official working at another federal agency by adding his own personal assertion to a message laying out several factual assertions, allowing his view point to appear as if was the author of the email rather than his own, the Times reports.

This manipulated email was then added into a group of documents Clinesmith compiled for another FBI official to read ahead of them signing an affidavit that is given to the surveillance court, which attests under the penalty of perjury that the information in the wiretap application is both “true and correct.” 

Clinesmith, who worked on both the investigation into Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonDOJ watchdog expected to say FBI erred, but absolve top leaders of anti-Trump bias: report Intel officials told senators Russia wanted to pin election meddling on Ukraine: report Trump says Pompeo would ‘win in a landslide’ if he ran for Senate MORE‘s email server and the Russia probe, was removed from special counsel Robert MuellerRobert (Bob) Swan MuellerTrump says he’ll release financial records before election, knocks Dems’ efforts House impeachment hearings: The witch hunt continues Speier says impeachment inquiry shows ‘very strong case of bribery’ by Trump MORE‘s team after Horowitz discovered text messages sent from officials that disparaged Trump.

Horowitz’s referral has reportedly been sent to Connecticut U.S. Attorney John DurhamJohn DurhamDOJ watchdog expected to say FBI erred, but absolve top leaders of anti-Trump bias: report Trump predicts ‘historic’ conclusions from DOJ’s watchdog report on ‘spying’ FBI official under investigation for allegedly altering document in Russia probe: report MORE, who was assigned by Attorney General William BarrWilliam Pelham BarrDOJ watchdog expected to say FBI erred, but absolve top leaders of anti-Trump bias: report Lawmakers introduce bill to help police access digital evidence during investigations Trump predicts ‘historic’ conclusions from DOJ’s watchdog report on ‘spying’ MORE to probe the origins of the Russia investigation. The referral suggests that Durham’s inquiry could turn into a criminal investigation.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/471727-doj-watchdog-expected-to-say-fbi-erred-but-absolve-top-leaders-of