Here’s what you need to know to understand the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

What’s happening now: The House Judiciary Committee has approved two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

What happens next: The full House of Representatives will vote on impeachment sometime next week. If the House impeaches Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the Senate will hold a trial in January. Here’s how the Senate trial might work.

How we got here: A whistleblower complaint led Pelosi to announce the beginning of an official impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24. Closed-door hearings and subpoenaed documents related to the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky followed. After two weeks of public hearings in November, the House Intelligence Committee wrote a report that was sent to the House Judiciary Committee, which held its own hearings. Pelosi and House Democrats announced the articles of impeachment against Trump on Dec. 10.

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

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

Want to understand impeachment proceedings better? Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions? Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/five-questions–and-answers–about-trump-ukraine-and-impeachment/2019/12/13/dc5df36c-1dc5-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html?outputType=amp

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/13/politics/supreme-court-trump-impeachment-taxes-separation-of-powers/index.html

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    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/13/politics/mitch-mcconnell-white-house-impeachment-democrats/index.html

    Rep. Val DemingsValdez (Val) Venita DemingsPelosi faces tough choices on impeachment managers Impeachment inquiry enters critical new phase Lawmakers turn attention to potential witnesses at Judiciary impeachment hearings MORE (D-Fla.) on Friday called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellSenate gears up for battle over witnesses in impeachment trial McConnell: I doubt any GOP senator will vote to impeach Trump McConnell says he’ll be in ‘total coordination’ with White House on impeachment trial strategy MORE (R-Ky.) to recuse himself from the Senate impeachment trial, citing the GOP leader’s remarks the previous night about coordinating with the White House.

    McConnell said during an interview on Fox News on Thursday night that “everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can.”

    Demings accused the GOP leader of promising to “sabotage” the trial.

    “No court in the country would allow a member of the jury to also serve as the accused’s defense attorney. The moment Senator McConnell takes the oath of impartiality required by the Constitution, he will be in violation of that oath,” she said in a statement.

    Demings, who sits on the House Intelligence and Judiciary panels that have led the impeachment inquiry, pointed to Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution. The section states: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.”

    The “Oath” is defined by Senate rules and would read: “I solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of [President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate gears up for battle over witnesses in impeachment trial Vulnerable Democrats tout legislative wins, not impeachment Trump appears to set personal record for tweets in a day MORE], now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.”

    The Hill has reached out to McConnell’s office for comment.

    Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to advance two articles of impeachment against Trump: one accusing him of abusing his power by leaning on a foreign country to open an investigation into a political rival, and a second accusing him of obstruction of Congress by refusing to comply with the impeachment probe.

    Trump has called the impeachment investigation into his dealings with Ukraine a “witch hunt” and urged Republicans to defend him during a Senate trial.

    McConnell, who has said a Senate trial won’t begin until January, said this week that he hopes the trial would be a “shorter process rather than a lengthy process” 

    The GOP leader demurred in the Fox interview on having potential witnesses, saying he would coordinate with Trump’s lawyers.

    “The president’s counsel may or may not decide they want to have witnesses. The case is so darn weak coming over from the House,” McConnell added.

    Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/474487-rep-demings-senator-mcconnell-violated-oath-must-recuse-himself

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that he didn’t believe any Republicans in the Senate planned to vote to remove President Donald Trump from office should the House impeach him next week, saying he even expected some Democrats to side with GOP lawmakers.

    “There is no chance the president is going to be removed from office,” McConnell told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday evening. “My hope is there won’t be a single Republican who votes for either of these articles of impeachment. And Sean, it wouldn’t surprise me if we got one or two Democrats.”

    The remarks came as lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee held a heated markup session on two articles of impeachment related to Trump’s demand that the leader of Ukraine announce the opening of an investigation into a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. One article focuses on abuse of power and the other on obstruction of Congress. 

    The committee abruptly delayed the panel’s vote on the measures late Thursday, saying it would vote Friday morning, when the articles are expected to pass on a party-line vote. The full House will vote on the articles next week, and, if passed, the Senate will hold a trial on the case against Trump in January.

    Diplomat added significant ballast to the allegation Trump was trying to extort Ukraine into ginning up bad news about Biden. The impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump has heard some extraordinary testimony over the last month. From the first mention of Trump’s desired “deliverable” from Ukraine, successive layers of witnesses and documents have added to an indictment of the president’s conduct that only gets heavier, as Trump howls his defenses to the wind. On Tuesday, things got even worse for Trump – much worse, as many saw it. For almost 10 hours, William Taylor, a former military officer and career diplomat with the rank of ambassador under the last four presidents, spoke with congressional investigators about how the Trump administration has been conducting a two-track foreign policy in Ukraine, where Taylor is in charge of the US embassy. We don’t yet know most of what was said. The current public record of the closed-door testimony comprises only a copy of Taylor’s 15-page opening statement – and the spectacle of the ashen faces of members of Congress as they filed out from the hearing. “This testimony is a sea change,” congressman Stephen Lynch told reporters. In his testimony, Taylor explained his discovery of an “irregular, informal policy channel” by which the Trump administration was pursuing objectives in Ukraine “running contrary to the goals of longstanding US policy”. What the “informal channel” wanted – and briefly obtained, Taylor said – was for the Ukrainian president to agree to go on CNN to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, whom Trump sees, perhaps mistakenly, as a top 2020 threat. The Trump administration held up “much-needed military assistance” to Ukraine in an effort to extract the Ukrainian statement, Taylor said. “More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the US assistance,” he noted. In a process scrambled so far by misleading Trump tweets and relying in part on anonymous witnesses, the testimony of Taylor, a Vietnam veteran respected in both parties with 50 years of public service behind him, landed as a potential game-changer. It was just the kind of testimony that seemed to answer even the most stubborn demands of Trump loyalists such as Senator Lindsey Graham for additional, definitive proof that Trump was turning the broad power of his office to his own narrow devices. “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing,” Graham said at the weekend. The senator denied in a Fox News appearance Tuesday that Taylor had delivered such evidence. But Taylor added significant ballast to the allegation that Trump was attempting to extort Ukraine into ginning up bad news about Biden. What Taylor added was a careful stitchwork of detail, describing who was working to extort the Ukrainians, how they were going about it, how their aims clashed with stated US policy, how the Ukrainians responded, and what people said to him about it at the time. Taylor made clear he has the memos and other records to back up his story. And he exposed the slapstick clumsiness of the Trump flunkies working the “informal channel” – notably Gordon Sondland, the hotelier and Trump mega-donor turned ambassador. “Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman,” Taylor testified. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.” But “the explanation made no sense”, Taylor argued. “The Ukrainians did not ‘owe’ President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was ‘crazy’.” Reaction to Taylor’s testimony generally fell between shock and dumbfoundedness. “I cannot overstate how damaging this Ambassador Taylor testimony is to Trump,” tweeted Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general. “Taylor’s statement is a completely devastating document,” wrote Susan Hennessey, the executive director of the Lawfare site. “I know they will find a way but it’s just impossible to imagine how Republicans in Congress will be able to defend this. It is well beyond what most assumed was the worst-case scenario.” The White House issued a statement Tuesday night impugning Taylor, a Trump appointee, as part of a cadre of “radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the constitution”. But the taller the evidence against him, the smaller Trump’s protests seemed. Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar, a presidential candidate, challenged Republicans to take a stand. “After Diplomat Taylor’s testimony you can no longer question whether this happened,” she tweeted. “The question is if you choose to follow the law or be part of the cover-up.” Trump huddled Tuesday night with members of his legal team, the Wall Street Journal reported, and he urged congressional Republicans to do more to rebut the impeachment inquiry. But there were reportedly no talking points, and no one knew quite what they were supposed to say, or whom to take that direction from. Notably absent from the meeting of Trump’s advisors was Rudy Giuliani, whom Taylor describes as running the shadow operation in Ukraine. “The official foreign policy of the United States was undercut by the irregular efforts led by Mr Giuliani,” Taylor said. He described a seemingly free hand for Giuliani, whose foreign clients include or have included Ukraine-based antagonists of current and former US officials, to open and close diplomatic channels and to direct US policy as he pleased. One of the weightiest impacts of Taylor’s testimony might have to do with the senior US officials it names. Taylor took his concerns about Trump’s alleged attempt to extort Ukraine, he said, to both national security adviser John Bolton and to secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Bolton, who has since resigned, reacted with outrage and frustration. Pompeo, who is eyeing a US Senate bid in his home state of Kansas, apparently greeted Taylor’s warning with silence. “This is not the story of corruption in Ukraine,” tweeted the political strategist David Axelrod. “It’s the story of corruption at the highest levels of the US government. It’s the story of extortion, with US military aid to a besieged ally held hostage to the president’s personal political project.” Trump’s critics say the story is plain: that the president twisted the immense powers of his office to personal ends, in betrayal of constitution and country. When it comes time to prove it, Taylor’s testimony is likely to be front and center.

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., listens as Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., and other House Democrats discuss H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which passed in the House but is being held up in the Senate, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Sept. 27, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

    (COMBO) This combination of pictures created on September 24, 2019 shows
    US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, on September 24, 2019 and
    US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, September 20, 2019. – Amid mounting allegations of abuse of power by the US President, Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives, the first step in a process that could ultimately lead to Trump’s removal from office. (Photos by Mandel NGAN and SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN,SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)




    Despite a nearly three-month investigation in the House, in which a parade of current and former administration officials voiced concern over Trump’s actions, McConnell said he doubted the merits of Democrats’ evidence against Trump.

    “The case is so darn weak coming over from the House,” he said.

    The majority leader said Thursday he had been coordinating with Trump’s legal team throughout the impeachment process, an arrangement that would continue if the Senate begins a trial. It would take a two-thirds vote in the Senate to remove Trump from office, but the GOP holds a 53-47 majority, meaning at least 20 Republican senators would have to join every Democrat in voting to remove the president.

    Such a result is highly unlikely.

    McConnell also signaled that he hopes the impeachment process in the Senate will be “shorter” rather than a drawn-out effort that could detract from the 2020 election.

    “There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this — to the extent that we can,” McConnell said. “We have no choice but to take it up. But we’ll be working through this process, hopefully in a short period of time, in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office and the people representing the president in the well of the Senate.”

    • This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

    Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/12/13/mitch-mcconnell-says-theres-no-chance-trump-will-be-removed-from-office/23880043/

    Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor testifying in support of Mr. Trump’s impeachment, was trying to make a distinction between kings and presidents when she mentioned Mrs. Trump’s son.

    “The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility,” she said. “While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”

    Ms. Grisham flagged the comment for the first lady, who criticized Ms. Karlan for it on Twitter.

    “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics,” Mrs. Trump said. “Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.”

    Ms. Karlan later apologized.

    Ms. Grisham said on Friday that there was a distinction between someone mentioning the name of the youngest Trump child at a congressional hearing, and the president mocking Ms. Thunberg, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.

    “Their son is not an activist who travels the globe giving speeches,” Ms. Grisham wrote. “He is a 13-year-old who wants and deserves privacy.”

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/us/politics/melania-trump-greta-thunberg.html

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    Source Article from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/barr-doj-ig-russia-report-erase-truth.html

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      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/13/politics/mitch-mcconnell-white-house-impeachment-democrats/index.html

      Vance has said his office needs the records for its investigation into alleged hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, and to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both women said they had affairs with Trump several years ago, and Vance’s office is examining whether any Trump Organization officials filed falsified business records, in violation of state law, related to the payments. Trump has denied the affairs and any wrongdoing.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-will-take-up-trumps-broad-claims-of-protection-from-investigation/2019/12/13/1de84cd6-1d19-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html

      The British electorate voted Thursday in one of the most important elections in the country’s modern history. And the results show that they voted overwhelmingly for Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson and for Brexit: a 78-seat parliamentary majority for Johnson and the worst showing for the opposition, the left-wing Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, in nearly 100 years.

      This does not appear to be because Johnson was a particularly adept or well-liked political figure. His approval ratings were deeply in the negative, according to prelection data from YouGov. His central campaign promise, finally getting out of the European Union, divided the country in half. He has a reputation as an untrustworthy buffoon and an even more sinister history of racism: He has compared women in burkas to “letterboxes” and claimed that Muslim immigrants lack “loyalty to Britain” because of their religion: “Islam is the problem,” as he put it. He once penned a column describing Africans as “pickanninies” with “watermelon smiles.”

      Johnson appears to have benefitted not from his own unique political talents, but from his opponent’s problems. Brexit put Corbyn in a much tougher position than Johnson, needing to appeal to both Leave and Remain voters while Johnson could focus on the former. But Corbyn was also profoundly unpopular personally: While Johnson was at minus 12 in the YouGov approval rating polling, Corbyn was at negative 40.

      Corbyn’s attempt to straddle the line on the decisive issue of Brexit ended up with a wishy-washy and incoherent muddle that neither Remainers nor Leavers could believe in. Some of his leftist economic policies polled well, but Corbyn himself wasn’t viewed as a credible leader — even on issues like health care where his policy approach resonated with a lot of the public. He also presided over a significant rise in anti-Semitism in the party’s ranks; he had recently been condemned by the leading Jewish Labour organization for turning their party into “a welcoming refuge for anti-Semites.”

      Corbyn is, in some ways, yesterday’s problem. He has already vowed to resign before the next UK election, his political ambitions in shambles.

      But the question of how Labour can recover — and what this tells us about the global fight against parties like the Conservatives that embrace right-wing populism — is still very much unsettled.

      What happened in the UK election results — and what it means

      Historically, both British and European politics more broadly have been heavily determined by class divisions. Left-wing parties like Labour dominated among the industrial working class, while right-wing parties like the Tories did well among society’s upper crust.

      But in the past several decades, this historical pattern became unglued. Educated urban professionals have drifted left and the working classes have tiled right, a shift that social scientists attribute to the rising importance of immigration and identity issues in European politics. In Britain, Brexit supercharged this long-running process, as highly educated city dwellers tended to oppose Brexit (making them more likely to vote Labour) while rural and less educated voters tended to support it (making them more likely to vote Conservative).

      The 2019 election results reflected the post-Brexit realignment. Labour was absolutely devastated in its traditional working class constituencies (the UK equivalent to congressional districts), with the Conservatives — long caricatured as the parties of the rich — making historic inroads. “The resounding Conservative victory was driven by a dramatic swing of working-class support away from Labour,” as the Financial Times put it in a post-election data analysis.

      “In seats with high shares of people in low-skilled jobs, the Conservative vote share increased by an average of six percentage points and the Labour share fell by 14 points. In seats with the lowest share of low-skilled jobs, the Tory vote share fell by four points and Labour’s fell by seven,” the FT said in its analysis. “The swing of working class areas from Labour to Conservative had the strongest statistical association of any explored by the FT.”

      This is extremely preliminary: We don’t yet know which voters in these constituencies voted which way, so we can’t yet say whether class itself is the key. Indeed, another analysis by Will Jennings, a political scientist at the University of Southampton, suggested that education level — the percentage of college graduates in a constituency — was actually more important than income level or class per se, which would be consistent with long-term data on European political realignment.

      But what’s clear is that Labour’s theory of the case — that its socialist policy manifesto would be able to win back Brexit voters in its traditional working-class heartland and secure the cities — was a failure. The question is why.


      Prime Minister Boris Johnson, now and for quite some time.
      Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images

      The debate among British analysts has largely polarized along pro- and anti-Corbyn lines.

      The pro-Corbyn analysis is that Brexit was a unique event that swamped their otherwise popular economic agenda, creating an impossible task for Labour of appealing to both its Remain supporters in London and the Leavers in the north of England.

      Anti-Corbyn analysts suggest that his attempt to have it both ways on Brexit — calling for a second referendum but not saying which side he would support — was a poor way of handling the dilemma, depressing Remain voters everywhere without winning over Leavers attracted to Johnson’s simple message. In this view, Corbyn was so incredibly unpopular, his socialism so out of touch with the British public, and his failure to tackle the anti-Semitism crisis so toxic, that he had doomed the party by leading it.

      As is often the case in situations like this, the answer is somewhere in the middle. “In a shock move,” UK politics analyst Torsten Bell writes, “the ‘it was Brexit’ vs ‘it was Corbyn’ debate misses the blindingly obvious fact that it was both.”

      It’s true that Labour was in a tough position on Brexit, needing to hold support in Leave constituencies and turn out Remain voters. The Tories, by contrast, figured out a way to win on a simple Leave message.

      But it’s also clear that Labour did badly across the board: Jennings’s analysis finds that Labour lost support even in cities, a result that suggests that Corbyn’s personal unpopularity was depressing voters who should (on the Brexit theory) be supporting the more Remain-friendly party.

      This early analysis suggests that Labour was simply unprepared to fight the battle on the terms the Tories were waging. Though Johnson was widely unpopular, his party also moved to the center on economic issues, a strategy that helped sideline Corbyn’s class-based appeal and emphasized the largely identity-based fight over Brexit. Brexit carried the day by appealing to British insularity and hostility to outsiders. Johnson mobilized voters who found this vision attractive, as well as those simply frustrated with the dragged-out Brexit process, and won a huge victory.

      Due to a combination of legitimate strategic difficulty and the gross incompetence of its leader, Labour simply didn’t have an effective response. The question of how to fight back against the Tory embrace of right-wing populism, to mobilize a counter-movement in favor of a more inclusive British identity, is still an open one.

      For those of us troubled by the illiberal drift among advanced democracies — not just Britain or Europe, but also the United States — these results cannot be taken as a good sign.

      Source Article from https://www.vox.com/world/2019/12/13/21004755/uk-election-2019-jeremy-corbyn-labour-defeat

      The U.S., in a statement, did say the deal requires structural reforms and other changes by China in the areas of intellectual property, technology transfer, agriculture, financial services, and currency and foreign exchange.

      “I think the greatest news that we’re all not focused on is there’s no escalation of December 15 tariffs and escalation has come to a halt,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities. “We’ve literally bought the rumor and sold the news.”

      Citigroup global economist Cesar Rojas said the potential de-escalation of trade tensions should be positive for encouraging animal spirits and help support the current rebound in manufacturing.

      “Overall we think we have what was expected, no December tariffs,” said Rojas. “There is the potential for roll backs of tariffs once this is implemented. We have some time…basically we are kicking the can down the road.” Rojas said he is expects that national security issues will remain a point of controversy between the two, particularly as they discuss technology in the next round of talks.

      Analysts have said stocks were already pricing in the promise of a trade deal. But the market was not pricing in any new tariffs, and stocks would have reacted violently had the next round of tariffs on $156 billion in Chinese goods been imposed on Sunday, as threatened. Analysts said investors were, however, disappointed that news reports the U.S. was willing to roll back a full half of all the tariffs did not pan out.

      “I think we’ll wake up Monday and see a lot of things that could have gone wrong this week and didn’t. This is one of them and the U.K. election was the other. The market tends to be a little fickle in terms of how much was priced in,” said Hogan. “This is good news. We put a cap on U.S. China trade escalation.”

      Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/trade-reax-domm-191213-ec.html

      Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he will follow direction from President Trump’s lawyers during an impeachment trial.

      “Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House counsel,” McConnell told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday. “We’ll be working through this process, hopefully in a short period of time, in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.”

      “I’m going to take my cues from the president’s lawyers,” the Kentucky Republican added.

      McConnell met with White House lawyer Pat Cipollone on Thursday to discuss the Senate trial, which is expected to begin in January.

      McConnell has repeatedly expressed confidence that Trump will not be removed from office.

      The House Judiciary Committee is expected to pass two articles to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Friday morning. The articles then go to the House floor for a vote that Speaker Nancy Pelosi said would take place next week.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/going-to-take-my-cues-from-the-presidents-lawyers-mcconnell-to-coordinate-with-white-house-on-impeachment

      President Donald Trump said Friday that as part of the U.S.-China trade deal, Washington will not charge Beijing with any new tariffs and will slightly reduce existing ones.

      He also said that at Beijing’s request, “phase two” talks with China will begin immediately rather than waiting until after the 2020 election.

      The Office of the United States Trade Representative confirmed that the U.S. will be maintaining 25% tariffs on approximately $250 billion of Chinese imports while reducing tariffs on $120 billion in products to 7.5%.

      In a tweet, the president wrote: “We have agreed to a very large Phase One Deal with China. They have agreed to many structural changes and massive purchases of Agricultural Product, Energy, and Manufactured Goods, plus much more. The 25% Tariffs will remain as is, with 7 1/2% put on much of the remainder …

      “…The Penalty Tariffs set for December 15th will not be charged because of the fact that we made the deal,” he added. “We will begin negotiations on the Phase Two Deal immediately, rather than waiting until after the 2020 Election. This is an amazing deal for all. Thank you!”

      The USTR’s office added that the “phase one” agreement struck between the U.S. and China also includes a commitment by Beijing to make “substantial” purchases of American goods in coming years.

      China’s Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun confirmed the country would increase its purchases of agricultural goods but declined to specify how much. The deal also involves intellectual property, technology transfers, agricultural goods, financial services and expansion of trade, Chinese officials said.

      “President Trump has focused on concluding a Phase One agreement that achieves meaningful, fully-enforceable structural changes and begins rebalancing the U.S.-China trade relationship. This unprecedented agreement accomplishes those very significant goals and would not have been possible without the President’s strong leadership,” United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a release.

      The United States first imposed tariffs on imports from China in January 2018 and based its sanctions on what it argued were illegal acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation.

      Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/trump-says-25percent-tariffs-will-remain-but-new-china-duties-will-not-take-effect-sunday.html

      “My message to the British is that the more loyal we are to each other, the more our relationship will be close. But don’t think you can have an extensive trading relationship, a maximal access to the European market, with substantial differences on sanitary, climate, economic and social regulations. This is not true,” he said.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/boris-johnson-campaigned-for-brexit-and-against-the-eu-now-europes-leaders-are-delighted-by-his-victory/2019/12/13/19722124-1d6c-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html

      Outgoing Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 400 people in his final days in office.

      Timothy D. Easley/AP


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      Timothy D. Easley/AP

      Outgoing Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 400 people in his final days in office.

      Timothy D. Easley/AP

      Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin departed the governor’s mansion three days ago, but the reverberations of some of his final actions are still being felt across the state.

      Bevin, a Republican who narrowly lost a bid for a second term last month, issued pardons to hundreds of people, including convicted rapists, murderers and drug offenders.

      In one case, Bevin pardoned a man whose whose family raised more than $20,000 to pay off money still owed from his 2015 gubernatorial campaign.

      In all, the former governor signed off on 428 pardons and commutations since his loss to Democrat Andy Beshear, according to The Courier-Journal. The paper notes, “The beneficiaries include one offender convicted of raping a child, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner and a third who killed his parents.”

      Bevin’s controversial decisions have been greeted with shock and consternation from many across the state.

      Some residents reacted angrily to a Thursday Twitter post from Bevin’s official account of a sunset along with #WeAreKY.

      “Winter sunset … ,” Bevin wrote, “Phone camera doesn’t do it justice…Truly spectacular. #WeAreKY”

      Twitter user Josh Trosper blasted the governor in a tweet: “I guess you can snap pics when you don’t have the time to look families (or voters) in the face and tell them you pardoned murderers and rapists.”

      Rob Sanders, the Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that he had backed Bevin, but that the pardons changed his mind.

      “I was somebody who supported him and believed in him and I’m disgusted at myself for having done so,” Sanders said to the Enquirer about Bevin.

      One pardon that had Sanders — and many others — particularly outraged was that of Micah Schoettle. He’s a 41-year-old convicted of raping a 9-year-old child last year. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, according to the Courier-Journal.

      In his pardon order, Bevin wrote, “Micah Schoettle was tried and convicted of a heinous crime based only on testimony that was not supported by any physical evidence.”

      He added: “This case was investigated and prosecuted in a manner that was sloppy at best. I do not believe that the charges against Mr. Schoettle are true.”

      Bevin commuted Schoettle’s sentenced to time served and ordered a full and unconditional pardon.

      Another of Bevin’s pardons was of Patrick Brian Baker, who was convicted in 2017 of murdering Donald Mills and tampering with physical evidence, among other charges.

      As the Courier-Journal also reports, Baker’s family “raised $21,500 at a political fundraiser last year to retire debt from Bevin’s 2015 gubernatorial campaign.” Baker’s brother and sister-in-law also donated $4,000 to Bevin campaign, according to a state election finance database, the paper reports.

      “Patrick Baker is a man who has made a series of unwise decisions in his adult life,” Bevin wrote in his pardon letter dated Dec. 6, adding that evidence in his conviction was “sketchy at best.”

      “I am not convinced that justice has been served in the death of Donald Mills, nor am I convinced that the evidence has proven the involvement of Patrick Baker as murderer,” Bevin wrote.

      Baker was sentenced to 19 years, but served just two. His sentence was commuted to time served and a pardon only for the charges connected to the conviction.

      Not all of Bevin’s pardons were so contentious.

      He also pardoned Tamishia Wilson of Henderson, Ky., convicted in 2006 of trafficking marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession. She was also convicted in 2004 of theft.

      Bevin proclaimed in a Dec. 9 letter that she “is a new woman. She has turned her life around and become a model citizen.”

      The former governor also spared the life of death row inmate Gregory Wilson who was convicted in 1988 of murder. The Courier-Journal reports the trial was widely described as “a travesty of justice and a national embarrassment for Kentucky.”

      The paper said Wilson’s defense team consisted of two lawyers, one whom “had never tried a felony before” and a lead counsel who “had no office, no law books and on his business card, he gave out the phone number to a local tavern.”

      An array of other ethical woes plagued the case.

      Bevin commuted his sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole, writing that Wilson received “the short end of the justice stick” adding, “Regardless of the final resolution of future parole board hearings, Mr. Wilson at least deserves an equal opportunity for justice to be served.”

      Reached on Thursday for comment by The Washington Post, Bevin said of the pardons, “I’m a believer in second chances.”

      “If there has been a change and there’s no further value that comes for the individual, for society, for the victims, for anybody, if a person continues to stay in,” Bevin noted, “then that’s when somebody should be considered for a commutation or a pardon.”

      During his tenure as governor, Bevin took a special interest in criminal justice reform and creating Kentucky’s Criminal Justice Policy Assessment Council. At the council’s first meeting in 2016, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported the panel’s mission was to “study the state’s criminal code… and suggest improvements for the 2017 General Assembly to consider.”

      In 2017, Bevin, through an executive order, restored the voting rights of 284 people convicted of nonviolent felonies, according to member station WFPL in Louisville.

      Earlier this year Bevin signed a bill that deepened the pool of people eligible to have their low-level criminal records expunged.

      Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/12/13/787811560/on-his-way-out-kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-pardons-murderers-rapists-hundreds-more

      The protests have been driven by anger over political corruption, unemployment and Iranian influence in Iraqi politics. The protests forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign last month, and the government has struggled to respond to the protesters’ demands.

      The lynching victim, identified as Haitham Ali Ismael, had been berating protesters for three days for obstructing the street beside his house and making noise, but he had been largely ignored. On Thursday, witnesses said, he climbed onto the roof of his house and began shooting into the air with a pistol.

      The protesters, apparently under the impression that he had killed someone, stormed his house, joined by a large number of unemployed people and children who looked as if they were barely adolescents. In video of the attack, the crowd can be heard chanting, “The blood of the martyrs will not be spilled in vain,” suggesting that they believed he had killed one or more protesters.

      The crowd barged into the small house at the edge of Al Wathba Square, where Mr. Ismael lived with his mother, and began stabbing him. The protesters took him outside, pulling off his clothes and dragging him bleeding through the streets.

      “I was standing there when they hung this young man by a rope and tied him to the pole,” said Fadhil Muhammad, 25, a tuk-tuk driver. “Then the rope was cut and the victim’s head fell on screws on the ground in the street and they entered into his head.”

      Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/world/middleeast/iraq-protesters-teen-lynching.html

      Exit polls show a landslide victory for Britain’s Conservative Party, headed by current Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Ashley Webster has the latest on ‘The Story with Martha MacCallum.’ #TheStory #FoxNews

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

      A winter weather advisory has been issued for portions of western Pennsylvania due to freezing rain and ice accumulations this morning.

      Watch the forecast by Pittsburgh’s Action Weather in the video player above.

      The winter weather advisory will be in effect for Westmoreland, Fayette, Greene and Garrett counties until 11 a.m.

      A glaze of ice can be expected in these areas and cause slick conditions

      We will see a few spotty showers late this morning and early afternoon. Rain starts late tonight and steady rain showers continue through most of the day on Saturday. As of now, rain should change to snow around 3-4 p.m. Saturday. Snow showers expected until 11 p.m. with a few light snow showers north and east of the city early Sunday morning.

      Today: Spotty rain showers, High 42

      Tonight: Rain Developing, Low 38

      Download the WTAE app to stay connected with severe weather alerts and breaking news.

      Already have the WTAE mobile app? Click here to learn how to get automatic severe weather alerts for where you live.

      Source Article from https://www.wtae.com/article/winter-weather-advisory-in-effect-for-parts-of-western-pennsylvania/30220632