Definida a atriz que viverá a mutante Dominó em Deadpool 2: Zazie Beetz, conhecida por seu papel regular na série Atlanta.
O anúncio foi feito pelo astro do filme, Ryan Reynolds, em seu Twitter, através de peças de dominó. Que outro jeito melhor de entrar no clima do filme, não?
Possivelmente, a personagem também dará as caras no filme da X-Force, previsto para 2019. Descrita como “sexy, flexível e atlética; de personalidade espirituosa, confiante e cheia de sarcasmo, sem jamais demonstrar verdadeiramente o que sente”, Dominó é membro do grupo de combate que pega missões perigosas (que não vão para os X-Men), e é composta por Deadpool, Cable, Wolverine, Mancha Solar e outros.
Democrats in Congress have warned the Trump administration that they remain concerned with a number of aspects of the North American trade agreement. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
The Trump administration has taken a step toward ratification of the new North American trade agreement, sending a draft statement to Congress that puts the legislative body on notice the pact could be coming soon.
The decision to send the draft of what’s called the “Statement of Administrative Action” on Thursday afternoon is creating fresh tension with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who are still pressing the administration to address problems that they have raised with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
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The step comes after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and other Trump administration officials emphasized that they would not send the USMCA to Congress without a signal from Pelosi that she and her caucus were ready to hold a vote on it.
The move begins a 30-day window that must pass before the Trump administration is allowed to submit the full implementing legislation to Congress. It does not start a clock on any legislation to be taken up, but it paves the way for the next step in the process — sending the USMCA to Capitol Hill for a vote — to take place as soon as the end of next month.
But Democrats are continuing to press for changes in areas such as labor standards and enforcement. Pelosi has also indicated that she wants to see how Mexico implements its new labor laws before USMCA gets a vote in Congress.
The House speaker derided the decision to send the draft statement before Democrats were fully satisfied as “not a positive step.”
“It indicates a lack of knowledge on the part of the administration on the policy and process to pass a trade agreement,” she said in a lengthy statement. “A new trade agreement without enforcement is not progress for the American worker, just a press release for the president.“
House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) also said that the timeline for considering the deal will depend on when changes are made to address Democrats’ issues with the agreement. The “premature submission” of the draft statement will have “no impact” on continuing discussions, Neal added.
A Capitol Hill added that the draft statement was unlikely to bring the Trump administration “any closer to addressing concerns that members of Congress have voiced.”
“I think they’re trying to create the illusion of progress by checking a box,” the aide said.
Administration officials, for their part, sought to emphasize that the decision to move forward with the statement of administrative action was foremost a procedural step.
In a letter sent to key congressional leaders including Pelosi, Lighthizer said the draft statement “provides an outline for further discussions with Congress on these issues.”
“We believe that the USMCA can — and ultimately will — attract broad bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress,” Lighthizer wrote. “That certainly remains my goal.”
The timing of the move leaves open the possibility of the Trump administration seeing the deal passed this summer, depending on whether and when officials are able to reach a compromise with Democrats.
Vice President Mike Pence told reporters earlier Thursday during a trip to Ottawa that the administration is “working earnestly” to wrap the process up before the fall.
“I can assure you that the president and I are working with members of the United States Congress to pass the USMCA — and to pass the USMCA this summer,” Pence said during a news conference after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The White House’s move also backs up actions that its North American trading partners have taken this week to move the deal toward approval in their respective countries. Mexico took the first steps to ratify the new North American pact in its Senate on Thursday, while Canada introduced a bill earlier this week to implement the deal.
Although the move represents the most significant step so far toward ratification in the U.S., it does not guarantee the trade deal will be voted on anytime soon.
Former President Barack Obama, for example, submitted his statement of administrative action for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership in August 2016, but he never ultimately sent the implementing bill for the deal.
That’s partly because Republican leaders refused to move on the legislation in the heat of the 2016 presidential election, and partly because even members of Congress who supported the TPP had a number of concerns about various provisions in the agreement.
Doug Palmer and Sabrina Rodriguez contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON – On the day President Donald Trump was acquitted of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the Senate impeachment trial, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted more than 80 times, taunting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and calling on the party to expel Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the sole Republican who voted to convict his father.
Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and another ubiquitous campaign surrogate, posted three tweets. She barely mentioned impeachment.
As Trump’s children take on an expanded role in his reelection campaign, they embrace different styles – and speak to different constituencies. From Trump Jr.’s bombastic rally warmups and social media posts to Lara’s focus on women’s issues and Ivanka Trump’s composed policy perch inside the White House, Trump’s family tailors its message to different voters.
“What would you do if you woke up on Nov. 4 and Bernie Sanders was your president?” Trump Jr. asked as he revved up a Phoenix crowd last week before a rally. “Guess what, guys: There are no do-overs. You get one chance to get this right.”
Trump Jr.’s bomb-throwing is especially noticeable in his social media feed. The president’s eldest son is far more likely than his siblings to use Twitter to attack Democrats, according to a USA TODAY analysis of nearly 4,500 tweets from the Trump family. He has referenced Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, for instance, in 8% of the tweets to his 4.4 million followers since Oct. 1. That’s a higher share than all of his siblings combined.
He is more likely to use the word “media” on Twitter, virtually always in an attack.
Republican observers said Trump Jr.’s red-meat style has made him a rising star among conservative voters within the president’s base.
By contrast, Lara Trump – who married Eric Trump in 2014 and who has taken on an increasingly high-profile role in the president’s election – is more likely than other family members to use the word “woman” on social media, according to the analysis. That syncs with her appearances at Women for Trump events in Iowa, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. A senior adviser on the campaign, Lara has been more likely to mention the words “employment” and “job” than other surrogates.
Lara Trump’s pitch to suburban women
“The media tells us women don’t support Trump! WRONG!” Lara posted Jan. 17 to her 761,000-plus followers.
The approach has allowed her to reach out to women voters, particularly suburban women. Donald Trump narrowly won white women in 2016, exit polls showed, but that support has slipped. A new USA TODAY/Ipsos poll found that 54% of suburban women are more likely to say a Democrat would be better for the country.
Ivanka Trump, who has been a more sporadic presence on the campaign trail in 2020, has focused heavily on her efforts inside the White House on workforce development, rarely wading into politics on social media. While Trump Jr. shares memes of Romney with a “Mom Jeans” caption, Ivanka Trump is more likely to post images of her official trips overseas on behalf of the administration, or of her children.
“Since 2017, rural areas have had similar or better economic performance than urban areas as measured by GDP growth, housing value appreciation and labor market participation,” Ivanka Trump tweeted this month in a message that was similar to others she has posted.
Her husband, Jared Kushner, whose vast portfolio includes building the wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and Middle East peace, has never posted a tweet. Both have long been viewed as moderating forces, relatable to centrist Republicans and some swing voters who crossed from backing President Barack Obama to Trump in 2016.
Trump campaign officials declined to discuss the strategy behind the use of family surrogates, but spokeswoman Erin Perrine described their involvement in the campaign as “key to victory in 2016” and predicted the same would hold true for 2020.
“Who better to speak to voters about President Trump and his record of success than those who know him best?” Perrine said. “Members of the Trump family are valued advisers and an integral part of this campaign.”
Lara Trump said her work on behalf of the campaign has brought the Trump family together.
“Nothing can really prepare you for this,” Lara Trump told USA TODAY in an interview. “We all became a lot closer because it almost feels like you go through a war with people. And I would say for all of us – including my father-in-law – we’re all a lot closer because of it.”
Dianne Bystrom, a former director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, said some of the president’s adult children fulfill a campaign role more typically handled by a first lady. In the 2020 cycle, Melania Trump has been less active on the campaign trail than many of her predecessors, including Michelle Obama and Laura Bush.
“It is not unusual for presidential candidates to employ surrogates, including family members, to strategically target the campaign’s message with a variety of groups,” Bystrom said. “I think we see so much more of the Trump children because Melania Trump has not been an effective spousal surrogate.”
The ‘star power’ of family members
Few presidential candidates have been able to draw so heavily on their progeny as proxies, and few have been able to put their children so front and center. President George H.W. Bush brought in his family, including George W. Bush, in the 1988 election. Romney’s children often appeared on stage during his 2012 campaign.
The difference in Trump’s case is that many of his children were well known before he ran for president.
“If you want star power, add the Trump name, and you automatically have it,” said Jason Miller, who was a senior aide on the president’s 2016 campaign.
“In addition to the last name, they bring a sense of passion, a sense of insight into the policies,” Miller said. “It says something when the people who know President Trump the best are willing to get out there and work so hard for him.”
The ubiquity of Trump’s children on the trail has had another impact: It has raised speculation about their own political ambitions.
Trump Jr., who published a New York Times bestseller last year, is among Republican voters’ top picks for the nomination in 2024, according to a poll for the news site Axios last month. Ivanka Trump also made the list, along with Vice President Mike Pence.
That interest hasn’t been lost on Trump’s children or the crowds turning out to hear the president speak.
When the president recognized Trump Jr. during a rally in New Hampshire this month, his supporters chanted, “46” – as in the 46th president.
When Trump Jr. addressed an audience in San Antonio last fall, someone in the audience shouted out “2024.” As many in the crowd laughed, Trump Jr. held a dramatic pause before his response.
“Let’s worry about 2020 first!” he said.
Contributing: The Associated Press, Courtney Subramanian
GoFundMe shut down a fundraiser for a Canadian protest over cross-border trucker vaccine mandates.
GoFundMe on Friday said it would work with organizers to redistribute the funds to other charities.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called that plan “fraud” saying he’d investigate “deceptive practices.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would work with Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to investigate GoFundMe for “deceptive practices” after the company said it would send remaining funds from the “Freedom Convoy” campaign to charities picked by organizers.
In a statement, GoFundMe said $1 million was released earlier this week and that fundraising organizers said the funds would be used for people who were traveling to Ottawa to participate in peaceful protests.
“Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe,” the platform said.
Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told The Washington Post on Saturday that there were a thousand vehicles, roughly 5,000 protesters, and at least 300 counterprotesters in the city.
“This is a siege,” Sloly told the Post. “It is something that is different in our democracy than I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
DeSantis on Saturday morning said, “It is a fraud for @gofundme to commandeer $9M in donations sent to support truckers and give it to causes of their own choosing.”
Medina Spirit, ridden by jockey John Velazquez, leads the field during the Kentucky Derby in Louisville on May 1. On Sunday, trainer Bob Baffert revealed the Derby winner had failed a drug test.
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Medina Spirit, ridden by jockey John Velazquez, leads the field during the Kentucky Derby in Louisville on May 1. On Sunday, trainer Bob Baffert revealed the Derby winner had failed a drug test.
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Medina Spirit, the horse that won the Kentucky Derby earlier this month, has failed a drug test. It is the latest of a long line of drug test failures by trainer Bob Baffert’s horses.
Baffert, who had celebrated a record seventh Derby victory, disclosed the positive test at a press conference Sunday at the Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville, Ky. He denied any wrongdoing and indicated that the horse had never knowingly been treated with betamethasone, the steroid for which it tested positive.
“I got the biggest gut-punch in racing, for something I didn’t do,” Baffert said.
If Medina Spirit fails a second test on a second sample, also collected at the time of the race, the horse will be disqualified from the Derby and its $1.86 million in winnings forfeited. Baffert will have a chance to appeal the case, which could take months to adjudicate.
Following the news, Churchill Downs — the site of the Kentucky Derby — has banned Baffert from entering horses in any event at the racetrack.
“Failure to comply with the rules and medication protocols jeopardizes the safety of the horses and jockeys, the integrity of our sport and the reputation of the Kentucky Derby,” the Churchill Downs company said in a statement. “We will await the conclusion of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commissions’ investigation before taking further steps.”
In 2018, Justify — another horse trained by Baffert — became just the second Triple Crown winner in four decades. The most prestigious achievement in horseracing, the Triple Crown is awarded to horses that win three of the sport’s most prominent races: the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes.
According to reporting by the New York Times though, Justify had failed a drug test weeks before its first Triple Crown race — which, had it been disclosed, would have disqualified it from participating in the race.
The horse’s breeding rights were reportedly sold for $60 million.
Last month, Baffert won an appeal with the Arkansas Racing Commission which issued a 15-day suspension over two positive drug tests involving his horses in May 2020. He said the horses were inadvertently exposed to the painkiller lidocaine.
Another Baffert-trained horse, Gamine, tested positive for betamethasone in October.
If Medina Spirit is disqualified, he will be just the second horse in Kentucky Derby history to be dethroned because of a drug infraction. In 1968, Dancer’s Image was disqualified over use of phenylbutazone, a pain reliever that is now permitted for use during races.
For now, Medina Spirit is still set to race in the Preakness on Saturday as it pursues a record third Triple Crown win for Baffert.
At Sunday’s press conference announcing the positive drug test, Baffert said he was worried about the state of horseracing.
“There’s problems in racing,” he said, “but it’s not Bob Baffert.”
São Paulo – Lebanese citizens no longer need to request a visa in each trip to Brazil. They will be entitled to three-year visas, for tourism and business trips, and may use them whenever they visit the country within that period. The measure was announced by the Brazilian minister of External Relations, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, in Brasília, in a meeting with the Lebanese minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Gebran Bassil, who is in Brazil. The multiple-entry visa may be used for 90-day stays in Brazil, and is renewable for another 90-day period within a year.
VPR
Bassil (R) and Temer (L): Lebanon wants Brazilian help in Middle East
The two countries have also signed an agreement exempting diplomatic passport bearers, officers and professionals on special mission or on duty from visa requirement. By the agreement, citizens during such trips, from any of the two countries, may stay in the other nation for a period of up to 90 days without a visa. The period may be extended on request during the professional’s mission in Lebanon or Brazil.
Bassil arrived in the country on Wednesday (9th) and this Thursday (10th), he had meetings with several Brazilian authorities in Brasília. He also signed with Machado a memorandum that provides for bilateral consultations between Lebanon and Brazil, so opinions can be exchanged on local and international issues of common interest. According to the text released by the minister of Foreign Affairs, the goal is to strengthen “traditional bilateral and cooperation relations.”
The Lebanese minister was also welcomed by Brazilian vice president, Michel Temer (affiliated with political party PMDB), in Brasília. He asked the Brazilian vice leader for Brazil’s intermediation to help solve conflicts in Middle East, according to information released by the website of the vice presidency. “Brazil encourages dialogue, pacification and more dialogue in that region, especially via the UN. The conflict must be ended because Lebanon is often the stage for neighboring conflicts, especially from Syria today,” said Temer. According to the vice president, the minister asked for the Brazilian Army’s help. The Brazilian Navy is already active in Lebanon as part of the United Nations Peace Mission.
Temer promised to discuss the subjects brought up by Bassil with the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff (affiliated with PT, the Worker’s Party). At the meeting with Temer, Bassil also manifested interest in intensifying trade relations and investments between the two countries. “We want Brazilian companies to invest in Lebanon. We are also interested in direct commercial flights connecting both countries,” said the Lebanese chancellor. The agreements signed with The Brazilian Ministry of External Relations (also known as Itamaraty) should boost trade and diplomatic relations. Both the visa agreement and the memorandum of understanding should enter into force as soon as each country complies with their own internal procedures for such.
This Friday (11th) Lebanon’s foreign minister will be in the city of São Paulo, where he will have a series of meetings with local authorities. The plans include meetings with governor Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), mayor Fernando Haddad (PT) and ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bassil will also be welcomed for a luncheon by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce president Marcelo Sallum.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a wave of coordinated bombings at churches and high-end hotels across Sri Lanka.
The terrorist organization provided no evidence to support the claim, which was announced in a statement in Arabic published by its Amaq news agency on Tuesday, saying the attackers were “among the fighters of the Islamic State,” according to a translation by SITE Intelligence Group, a company that tracks extremist groups.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged the claim when taking questions from reporters during a press conference in the capital, Colombo.
“All that we knew earlier is that there were foreign links and that this could not have been done just locally,” Wickremesinghe said. “There has been training done and a coordination which we [have] not seen earlier.”
Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
Sri Lankan security personnel walk past dead bodies covered with blankets amid blast debris at St. Anthony’s Shrine following an explosion in the church in Kochchikade in Colombo, April 21, 2019.
At least 310 people were killed and another 500 were injured Sunday when near-simultaneous explosions took place at eight locations across the island nation, which is located off the southern tip of India.
Three explosions erupted at churches holding Easter services while three others happened at hotels, including some commonly used by Western tourists. Most of the explosions were detonated by suicide bombers, according to the Sri Lankan defense ministry.
The first funerals for victims were held Tuesday.
At least four Americans were among those killed, according to a U.S. official briefed on the investigation. One of the Americans was identified Monday as Dieter Kowalski, 40, of Denver, according to his mother and Pearson, the London-based global education company that employed him.
At least 45 children were also among the dead, including at least five who were not Sri Lankan, according to Christophe Boulierac, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
Relatives place flowers after the burial of three victims who died in an Easter Sunday bomb blast at St. Sebastian Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, April 22, 2019.
Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister of defense, told the Sri Lankan parliament Tuesday that authorities have information showing Sunday’s blasts were carried out “in retaliation” for last month’s attacks at two mosques in New Zealand that killed 50 people.
Sri Lanka’s health minister, Rajitha Senaratne, on Monday blamed the deadly blasts on a little-known domestic Muslim militant group called National Thowfeek Jamaath.
At least 40 suspects have been arrested around the country in connection to the Easter explosions, Sri Lankan police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara told ABC News. Twenty-six of them were being questioned by the criminal investigations department Tuesday, while three were being held by the terrorist investigations unit.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Josh Margolin, Kirit Radia, Nadine Shubailat and Alex Stone contributed to this report.
North Korea fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday, the country’s Ministry of Defense.
The apparent ballistic missile was launched at 7:22 a.m. local time and passed over Japan at 7:29 a.m., the Japanese Ministry of Defense announced.
The government of South Korea confirmed that the Japanese government warned citizens to take shelter. The missile likely flew over Japan, but it is still unknown whether the missile fell into the sea.
A U.S. defense official confirmed to ABC News that North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday local time but didn’t offer other specifics.
Residents in Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures, toward the northern end of Japan, were advised to be on alert and to notify police or fire officials if debris is seen.
People were also warned by officials not to touch or pick up any debris.
The office of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida began to gather members to analyze the situation.
A government spokesperson said no damage has been reported so far and a search is underway for debris. Officials are gathering information and will work with South Korea and the U.S.
“North Korea’s actions threaten Japan and the international community,” the spokesperson said. “Missile launches like this go against the U.N. resolutions. Japan will launch a strong protest against North Korea in light of this. All new information will be shared promptly.”
The White House said in a statement late Monday local time in Washington, D.C., that “the United States strongly condemns the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) dangerous and reckless decision to launch a long-range ballistic missile over Japan.”
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on Monday night local time, according to White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.
“In both calls, the National Security Advisors consulted on appropriate and robust joint and international responses,” Watson said, “and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reinforced the United States’ ironclad commitments to the defense of Japan and the ROK [South Korea].”
The last time a missile flew over Japan was in August 2017. This year alone, North Korea has shot 21 ballistic missiles and two cruise missiles.
ABC News’ Joohee Cho, Guy Davies, Anthony Trotter and Matt Seyler contributed to this report.
But after two inconclusive elections and months of political paralysis in Israel, the committee is not functioning — and may not resume work for months, until another election is held and a government is formed.
Revolt in the prime minister’s party
Rebel members of Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party could demand a primary election to choose a new leader. If Mr. Netanyahu, who has denied all wrongdoing, survives as party leader, he could still run in a national ballot for another term.
If he were to lose a primary election, he would no longer be Likud’s candidate for another term as prime minister.
A third election
Since neither Mr. Netanyahu nor his main challenger, Benny Gantz, was able to form a government after the last election, the task has been given to Parliament, which has three weeks to try to choose a prime minister who has the backing of a majority of its members. If Parliament fails, Israel will hold another election.
If Mr. Netanyahu wins that election, despite the charges, President Reuven Rivlin would have to decide if it were appropriate to task him with forming a government.
In many respects, the law is not clear.
Mordechai Kremnitzer, a former dean of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research center, said a large segment of the public believes that a prime minister continuing to serve while charged with serious crimes is “an intolerable combination.”
“Everyone feels there is something askew here,” Mr. Kremnitzer said, adding that a prime minister cannot “go to court from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. and from 4 p.m. run the country.”
MOSCOW — Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union ceased to be. The flag was lowered for the last time on Dec. 25, 1991. That moment still begs deep questions for its heirs: Who were we as Soviets and where are we going as Russians?
Many of those answers can be found on a Moscow boulevard — named Gorky Street, after writer Maxim Gorky, from 1932 to 1990 and renamed Tverskaya Street, a nod to the ancient city Tver, as the Soviet Union was awash in last-gasp reforms.
It was the Soviet Union’s display window on the bright future Kremlin-run communism was supposed to bring. It was where the KGB dined, the rich spent their rubles, Vladimir Lenin gave speeches from a balcony and authorities wielded their power against one of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
A view of Tverskaya Street from a top floor of the Hotel National in 1980 and in August. The Moscow street’s changes through the decades encompass the shifts in everyday life from the Soviet Union in the 1920s to Russia today. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
In 1990s, Tverskaya embodied the fast-money excess of the post-Soviet free for all. In later years, it was packed with hopeful pro-democracy marchers. And now, under President Vladimir Putin, it is a symbol of his dreams of reviving Russia as a great power, reliving past glories and crushing any opposition to his rule.
Join a tour of Moscow’s famed Tverskaya Street.
The window in Room 107 at the Hotel Nationalfaces Red Square and the Kremlin. It’s a perfect view of Lenin’s tomb — fitting since he was Room 107’s most famous guest.
The Kremlin had been damaged during the Russian Revolution in 1917. So Lenin and his wife moved into Room 107 for seven days in March 1918, making the hotel the first home of the Soviet government.
The Hotel National in Moscow, from top: Artwork in the Socialist Realist style, which artists were ordered to adopt in the 1930s, still adorns the hotel; Elena Pozolotina has worked at the hotel since 1995; the hotel, which contains a restaurant, was built in 1902; and the hotel has hosted notable guests, including Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and actor Jack Nicholson. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
The National, built in 1902 during Imperial Russia, also accommodated other Soviet leaders, including Leon Trotsky and Felix Dzerzhinsky, the secret police chief. The building continued to be used by the Soviet government as a hostel for official party delegates and was renamed First House of Soviets in 1919.
Guests can now stay in the same room Lenin did for about $1,300 per night. In more recent years, the hotel has hosted notable guests including Barack Obama (when he was a senator) and actor Jack Nicholson.
“This hotel feels a little like a museum,” said Elena Pozolotina, who has worked at the National since 1995.
“We have rooms that look onto Tverskaya Street, and we always explain to guests that this is the main street of our city,” Pozolotina said. “This corner of Tverskaya that we occupy, it’s priceless.”
When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin demanded a massive redevelopment of Moscow in 1935, the order came to transform modest Gorky Street into a wide, awe-inspiring boulevard.
Engineer Emmanuel Gendel had the job of moving massive buildings to make way for others. Churches and monasteries were blown up, replaced by newspaper offices and a huge cinema.
The Moscow Central Eye Hospital was sheared from its foundation, rotated 97 degrees, jacked up, hitched on rails and pushed back 20 yards — with surgeons operating all the while, or so official media reported at the time.
In 1935, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin demanded the widening of the modest road, at the time called Gorky Street. Buildings were moved, as shown in this 1940s photo. Today, it is a wide boulevard known as Tverskaya Street. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
Gendel’s daughter, then about 8, proudly stood at a microphone, announcing: “Attention, attention, the building is moving.” Tatiana Yastrzhembskaya, Gendel’s granddaughter and president of the Winter Ball charity foundation in Moscow, recalls that Gendel extolled communism but also enjoyed the rewards of the elite. He drove a fine car and always brought the family the best cakes and candies, she said.
The largest Gorky Street building Gendel moved was the Savvinskoye Courtyard.The most difficult was the Mossoviet, or Moscow city hall, with a balcony where Lenin had given speeches. The building, a former residence of the Moscow governor general, had to be moved with its basement. The ground floor had been a ballroom without central structural supports.
Moving buildings on Gorky Street in 1940, from left: A mechanic at a control panel regulates the supply of electricity while a house is being moved; a postal worker passes a moving house; a specialist unwinds a telephone cable during a building move to maintain uninterrupted communication; and 13 rail tracks were placed under a house, on which 1,200 metal rollers were laid. (Photos by RGAKFD)
Gendel’s skills were used all over the U.S.S.R. — straightening towers on ancient mosques in Uzbekistan, inventing a means to drag tanks from rivers during World War II and consulting on the Moscow Metro.
Like many of the Soviet Union’s brightest talents, Gendel’s freedom was tenuous. His ex-wife was called by the KGB internal spy agency in 1937 and asked to denounce him. She refused, and he avoided arrest.
The largest Gorky Street building moved was Savvinskoye Courtyard, seen behind the corner building in this photo from 1938, a year before it was relocated; now, it is tucked in a courtyard behind No. 6 on Tverskaya Street. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
Under Joseph Stalin’s grand plan for Gorky Street, Moscow city hall had to be moved with its basement. The building is shown in 1986 and September. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
“I believe he was not arrested and sent to the camps because he was a unique expert,” said Yastrzhembskaya. World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, interrupted the Master Plan for Gorky Street.
In the 1930s, the head of the elite NKVD secret police, Lavrenty Beria, architect of the Stalin-era purges (known as the Great Terror), ordered the construction of a state-owned restaurant, Aragvi, to showcase food from his home republic of Georgia.
One night, NKVD agents descended in several black cars on a humble Georgian canteen in Moscow that Beria once visited. The agents ordered the chef, Longinoz Stazhadze, to come with them. The feared NKVD was a precursor to the KGB.
Stazhadze thought he was being arrested, his son Levan told Russian media. He was taken to Beria, who said that he had agreed with “the Boss” (Stalin) that Stazhadze would run Aragvi. Stazhadze had grown up a peasant, sent to work in a prince’s kitchens as a boy.
The Aragvi restaurant was a favorite of the secret police after it opened in 1938. Nugzar Nebieridze was the former head chef at Aragvi when it relaunched in 2016. (Courtesy of Nugzar Nebieridze)
Aragvi opened in 1938. It was only for the gilded set, a reminder that the “Soviet paradise” was anything but equal. The prices were astronomical. It was impossible to get a table unless the doorman knew you or you could pay a hefty bribe.
Aragvi, at No. 6 Tverskaya, was a favorite of the secret police; government officials; cosmonauts and pilots; stars of theater, movies and ballet; directors; poets; chess masters. Beria reputedly dined in a private room. Poet Sergei Mikhalkov said he composed the lyrics of the Soviet national anthem while sitting in the restaurant in 1943.
It was privatized in the 1990s and struggled, before closing in 2002.It reopened in 2016 after a $20 million renovation. But the new Aragvi closed abruptly in 2019 amid reports of a conflict between its owner and the building managers.
“You put your entire soul into cooking,” said the former head chef, Nugzar Nebieridze, 59, celebrated for his khinkali, a meaty dumping almost the size of a tennis ball. He was devastated to find himself unemployed. But other doors opened. He now prefers to travel, giving master classes around Russia.
On March 6, 1953, the day after Stalin died of a stroke, an estimated 2 million Muscovites poured onto the streets. They hoped to catch a glimpse of his body, which was covered with flowers and laid out in the marbled Hall of Columns near the Red Square.
Yulia Revazova, then 13, sneaked from her house with her cousin Valery without telling their parents. As they walked toward Pushkin Square, at one end of Gorky Street, the procession turned into a scene of horror. They saw people falling and being trampled. Some were crushed against metal fences. Valery, who was a few years older, grabbed Yulia by the hand and dragged her out of the crowd.
In March 1953, Soviet officials, including Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrenty Beria, followed the coffin of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a processional in Moscow. (Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images)
“He held my hand really tight and never let it go, because it was pure madness,” she recalled recently. “It took us four or five hours to get out of there. People kept coming and coming, I couldn’t even call it a column, it was just an uncontrollable mass of people.”
“I still have this feeling, the fear of massive crowds,” added Revazova, 82. “To this day, if I see a huge group of people or a really long line, I just cross the street.”
Neither Revazova nor her cousin knew about Stalin’s repressions.
“People were crying. I saw many women holding little handkerchiefs, wiping away tears and wailing,” she recalled. “That’s the psychology of a Soviet person. If there is no overarching figure above, be it God or Lenin, life will come crashing down. The era was over and there was fear. What will we do without Stalin?”
Officials never revealed how many people had died that day. The Soviet-approved archival footage of the four days of national mourning showed only orderly marches and memorials.
The Soviet culture minister, the steely Yekaterina Furtseva, was nicknamed Catherine the Third after the forceful Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Furtseva destroyed writers, artists or anyone who challenged Soviet ideas. She livedat an elite 1949apartment for government officials at No. 9 — an ultra-prestigious address with a view of the Kremlin.
Furtseva, a former small-town weaver, made sure that No. 9 was only for the cream of party officials and other notables, like famous Soviet actress Natalia Seleznyova, scientists, conductors and architects.
Riding the coattails of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Furtseva was the only woman in the Politburo and later became the Soviet Union’s cultural gatekeeper despite her provincial sensibilities. She once infamously mixed up a symphony with an opera, and critics were quick to notice.
In the late 1940s, No. 9 was being constructed; today, the building is home to apartments, shops and offices. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
“She had little in common with the artistic leaders of her country except a liking for vodka,” wrote Norwegian painter Victor Sparre, in his 1979 book on repression of dissident Soviet writers, “The Flame in the Darkness.”
Furtseva was famous for previewing performances, and banning anyone even subtly critical of Soviet policiesas anti-state. Director Yuri Lyubimov described one such visit to Moscow Taganka Theater in 1969, when she turned up wearing diamond rings and an astrakhan coat. She banned the play “Alive,” depicting a cunning peasant’s struggle against the collective farm system.She “was livid, she kept shouting,” he told L’Alternative magazine in 1984. She stormed out, warning him she would use her influence, “up to the highest levels,” against him.
He was expelled from the party and in 1984 was stripped of his citizenship. She vehemently denounced Solzhenitsyn and banned the Bolshoi Ballet’s version of “Carmen” in 1967 over prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya’s sensual performance and short “un-Soviet” costumes that did not cover enough leg.
“The ballet is all erotica,” she told the dancer. “It’s alien to us.” But Plisetskaya, whom Khrushchev once called the world’s best dancer, fought back. The ballet went on with some excisions (the costumes stayed) and became a legend in the theater’s repertoire.
Furtseva was nearly felled by scandal in 1974, ordered to repay $80,000 spent building a luxurious dacha, or country home, using state labor. She died months later.
The Nobel Prize-winning Solzhenitsyn exposed the Soviet system’s cruelty against some of its brightest minds trapped in the gulag, or prison camps.
Solzhenitsyn was given eight years hard labor in 1945 for privately criticizing Stalin, then three years in exile in Kazakhstan, a Soviet republic at the time. His books were banned. After release from exile in 1956, he was only allowed to make 72-hour visits to his second wife Natalia’s apartment at 12 Gorky St., Apartment 169. Solzhenitsyn had to live outside the city.
“People knew that there were camps, but not many people, if any, knew what life was like in those camps. And he described it from the inside. He had been there himself, and that was shocking to a lot of people,” said Natalia Solzhenitsyna during a recent interview at the apartment, which became a museum in 2018.
“Many people say that he did make a contribution to the final fall of the Soviet Union.”
Solzhenitsyn, who died in 2008, called Russia “the land of smothered opportunities.” He wrote that it always possible to live with integrity. Lies and evil might flourish — “but not through me.”
The museum displays tiny handwritten copies of Solzhenitsyn’s books, circulated secretly; film negatives of letters smuggled to the West, and beads made of compacted bread he used to memorize poems in prison.
“He spent a lot of time here with his children. We were always very busy. And we just enjoyed ourselves — being together.” They had three sons.
No. 12 Gorky St., from top: Natalia Solzhenitsyna lived in the apartment for years, and her husband, Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was only allowed short visits; the site now houses a museum displaying items connected to him, such as negatives with a copy of a novel he wrote; another exhibit includes Solzhenitsyn’s clothes from when he was sent to the gulag and beads made of compacted bread he used to memorize poems; and the Nobel Prize-winning writer’s desk is featured at the museum. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
If they were discussing something sensitive, they wrote notes to each other because of KGB bugs, and destroyed them. Two KGB agents usually roosted in the stairwell on the floor above and two more on the floor below.
“The Soviet authorities were afraid of him because of his popularity among intellectuals, writers, people of culture and the intelligentsia.”
Her favorite room is decked with black-and-white photos of dissidents sent to the gulag, the Soviet Union’s sprawling system of forced labor camps. “It’s dedicated to the invisibles,” she said, pointing out friends.
Sweden planned to award Solzhenitsyn’s 1970 literature prize in the Gorky Street apartment, but the writer rejected a secret ceremony. A Swedish journalist in Moscow, Stig Fredrikson, was Solzhenitsyn’s smuggler. He carried Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel lecture on tightly rolled film disguised as a battery in a transistor radio, and he brought other letters to the West and photos taped to his back.
“I felt that there was a sense of unfairness that he was so isolated and so persecuted,” Fredrikson said in a recent interview. “I got more and more scared and more and more afraid every time I met him.”
In 1971, the Soviet Union allegedly tried to poison Solzhenitsyn using a secret nerve agent, leaving him seriously ill. Early 1974 was tense. The prosecutor subpoenaed him. State newspapers railed against him.
The morning of Feb. 12, 1974, the couple worked in their study. In the afternoon, he walked his 5-month-old son, Stepan, in the yard below.
“He came back here and literally a minute later there was a ring at the door. There were eight men. They immediately broke the chain and got in,” his widow said. “There was a prosecutor in his prosecutor’s uniform, two men in plainclothes and the rest were in military uniform. They told him to get dressed.”
“We hugged and we kept hugging for quite awhile,” she recalled. “The last thing he told me was to take care of the children.”
He was deported to West Germany. The couple later settled in Vermont and set up a fund to help dissident writers using royalties from his book, “The Gulag Archipelago.” About 1,000 people still receive money from the fund, according to Solzhenitsyna.
When the writer and his wife returned to Russia in 1994, they traveled across the country by train. Thousands of people crushed into halls to hear him speak.
Solzhenitsyn abhorred the shock therapy and unchecked capitalism of the 1990s and preferred Putin’s tough nationalism. He died of heart failure at 89 in August 2008, five months after a presidential election that saw Putin switch places with the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, in a move that critics saw as a ploy to get around constitutional term limits.
Behind a grand, Stalin-era apartment block at 6 Gorky St. sits an ornate 1907 building famous for its facade, art nouveau glazed blue tiles, elegant arches and baroque spires. Once a monastery dormitory, it was a staple on pre-Soviet postcards from Moscow. But November 1939, the 26,000-ton building was put on rails and pushed back to widen the street.
Linguists Lev and Raisa Kopelev lived at Apartment 201 on the top floor. Their spacious dining room became a favored haven for Moscow’s intelligentsia from the 1950s to the 1980s.
During the Tverskaya Street reconstruction the Savvinskoye building, where Apartment 201 was located, was pushed back into the yard and blocked by this Stalin-era apartment block. Shown in 1966 and today. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
“People gathered all the time — to talk. In this apartment, like many other kitchens and dining rooms, at tables filled more often than not with vodka, herring, and vinaigrette salad, feasts of thought took place,” said Svetlana Ivanova, Raisa’s daughter from another marriage, who lived in the apartment for nearly four decades.
Solzhenitsyn and fellow dissident Joseph Brodsky were the Kopelev family’s friends, among many other artists, poets, writers and scientists who formed the backbone of the Soviet human rights movement of the 1960s.
Kopelev was a writer and dissident, turning his back on the Communist Party and a prestigious university position. A former gulag prisoner, he inspired the character Lev Rubinin Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle,” depicting the fate of arrested scientists.
“The apartment was a special place for everyone. People there were not afraid to speak their mind on topics that would be considered otherwise risky,” Ivanova said. “A new, different spirit ruled in its walls.”
The Eliseevsky store at No. 16 was a landmark for 120 years — born in czarist Russia, a witness to the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, a survivor of wars and a bastion during eras of shortages and plenty. It closed its doors in April.
Eliseevsky fell on hard times during the coronavirus pandemic as international tourists dwindled and Russians sought cheaper grocery shopping alternatives.
In the palace-like interior, two chandeliers hang from an ornate ceiling. Gilt columns line the walls. The front of the store, looking out at Tverskaya Street, has a row of stained glass.
The Eliseevsky store, which opened in 1901, is seen in April, with a few customers and some archival store photos, as it prepared to close as an economic victim of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
Denis Romodin, a historian at the Museum of Moscow, said Eliseevsky is one of just two retail spaces in Moscow with such pre-revolutionary interiors. But Eliseevsky’s level of preservation made it “one of a kind,” he said.
The building was once owned by Zinaida Volkonskaya, a princess and Russian cultural figure in the 19th century. She remodeled the house into a literary salon whose luminaries included Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin.
St. Petersburg merchant Grigory Eliseev opened the market in 1901. It quickly became a hit among Russian nobility for the selection of European wine and cheeses.
In 1934, the Eliseevsky store is seen next to a building that is being constructed; in September, the market, a landmark for 120 years, was empty, having closed in April. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
The Eliseevsky store on Tverskaya Street is seen at night in the 1990s; the nighttime view today is different. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
Romodin said it was Russia’s first store with price tags. Before Eliseevsky, haggling was the norm — and it was also unique in its innovative technology for the time: electric-powered refrigerators and display cases that allowed goods to be stored longer.
Even in the Soviet Union’s hungriest years, the 1930s famine, Eliseevsky stocked pineapples.
“One could find outlandish delicacies here, which at that time seemed very exotic,” Romodin said. “It was already impossible to surprise Muscovites with wine shops. But a grocery store with luxurious interiors, and large for that time, amazed and delighted Muscovites.”
In 1989, in a dusty government office by a corner of Pushkin Square, three young artists threw off decades of suffocating state control and opened the first independent art gallery.
That April, Yevgeny Mitta and two fellow students, Aidan Salakhova and Alexander Yakut, opened First Gallery. At the time, the Soviet Union was opening up under policies including glasnost, which gave more room for public debate and criticism.
Artists were ordered to adopt the Socialist Realist style in 1934, depicting scenes such as happy collective farmworkers. Expressionist, abstract and avant-garde art was banned. From the 1970s, underground art exhibitions were the only outlets to break the Soviet-imposed rules.
The First Gallery, from top: Yevgeny Mitta, Aidan Salakhova and Alexander Yakut opened the Soviet Union’s first independent art gallery in 1989 and received media attention; Mitta worked on a painting that he displays at his gallery; Mitta recalled recently that he “felt we had to make something new”; and an undated photo of Mitta at his gallery in Soviet times. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post and courtesy of Yevgeny Mitta)
“I just felt we had to make something new,” recalled Mitta, 58, who kept his interest in contemporary expressionism a secret at a top Moscow art school in the 1980s.
“It was like nothing really happened in art history in the 20th century, like it stopped,” he said. “The Socialist Realism doctrine was invented and spread to the artists as the only one possible way of developing paintings, films and literature.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, artists had to “learn how to survive, what to do, how to work and make a living,” he said.
In the Soviet Union’s final years, a mania raged for all things Western. Estée Lauder opened the first Western-brand shop on Gorky Street in 1989 after meeting Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in December 1988.
The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s, located across Pushkin Square on Gorky Street, opened Jan. 31, 1990 — a yellow-arched symbol of Gorbachev’s perestroika economic reforms. Pizza Hut opened later that year. (In 1998, Gorbachev starred in a commercial for the pizza chain.)
Karina Pogosova and Anna Patrunina were cashiers at McDonald’s on opening day. The line stretched several blocks. Police officers stood watch to keep it organized.
The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s opened in 1990 and eager customers lined up to enter; Karina Pogosova, left, and Anna Patrunina were cashiers at the fast-food restaurant on Gorky Street then, and they are senior executives with the company today. (Photos by Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
“The atmosphere was wonderful. The first day I had to smile the entire day and my face muscles hurt,” Patrunina said. “This is not a joke. Russians do not smile in general, so we were not used to smiling at all, not to mention for more than eight hours straight.”
Pogosova and Patrunina were students at the Moscow Aviation Institute when they learned McDonald’s was hiring through an ad in a local Moscow newspaper. Interview questions included: “How fast can you run 100 meters?” It was to gauge if someone was energetic enough for the job.
Pogosova and Patrunina are still with the company today, as senior vice president of development and franchising and vice president of operations, respectively.
“I thought that this is the world of opportunities and this new world is coming to our country, so I must be in this new world,” Patrunina said.
The smiling staff wasn’t the only culture shock for customers. Some had never tried the fountain sodas available. They were unaccustomed to food that wasn’t eaten with utensils. The colorful paper boxes that Big Macs came in were occasionally saved as souvenirs.
McDonald’s quickly became like a landmark on the street.
“I remember very well that the street and the entire city was very dark and McDonald’s was like an island of light with bright signage,” Pogosova said. “The street started to change after McDonalds opened its first restaurant there.”
The end of the Soviet Union uncorked Moscow’s wild 1990s. Some people made instant fortunes on acquiring state-owned enterprises at throwaway prices. Rules were being written on the fly. The city was pulsing with possibilities for those with money or those desperate to get some.
“It was easy to get drunk on this,” said Alex Shifrin, a former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive from Canada who lived in Moscow from the mid-90s until the late 2000s.
It all was on full display at Night Flight, Moscow’s first nightclub, opened by Swedish managers in 1991, in the final months of the Soviet Union, at Tverskaya, 17. The club introduced Moscow’s nouveau elite to “face control” — who merits getting past the rope line — and music-throbbing decadence.
The phrase “standing on Tverskaya” made its way into Russian vernacular as the street became a hot spot for prostitutes. Toward the end of the 2000s, Night Flight had lost its luster. The club scene in Moscow had moved on to bigger and bolder venues.
Decades before, No. 17 was famous as the building with the dancer: A statue of a ballerina, holding a hammer and sickle, placed atop thecupola during Stalin’s building blitz.
The statue of a ballerina, holding a hammer and sickle, could be seen atop the building at No. 17 in this 1943 photo; today, the dancer is missing. (Photos by RGAKFD and Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
Muscovites nicknamed the building the House Under the Skirt.
“The idea was to have Gorky Street as a museum of Soviet art. The statues represented a dance of socialism,” art historian Pavel Gnilorybov said. “The ballerina was a symbol of the freedom of women and the idea that, before the revolution, women were slaves. It is as if she is singing an ode to the regime.”
The statues were crumbling and were removed by 1958. People forgot them. Now a group of Muscovites, including Gnilorybov, are campaigning for the return of the ballerina.
“It’s an idea that we want to give the city as a gift. It’s not political,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
Pushkin Square has been Moscow’s favorite meeting place for friends, lovers and political demonstrations.
In November 1927, Trotskyist opponents of Stalin marched to the 27th House of Sovietsat one end of Tverskaya Street, opposite the Hotel National, in one of the last public protests against the Soviet ruler.
A celebration to say goodbye to winter at Pushkin Square in February 1987. (Igor Stomakhin)A night view in 1959 of Pushkin Square, a favorite meeting place for many. (RGAKFD)
In December 1965, several dozen dissidents gathered in Pushkin Square to protest the trials of two writers. It became an annual event. People would gather just before 6 p.m. and, on the hour, remove their hats for a minute.
In 1987, dissidents collected signatures at Pushkin Square and other locations calling for a memorial to those imprisoned or killed by the Soviet state. The movement evolved into Memorial, a leading human rights group. Memorial was declared a “foreign agent” in 2016 under Putin’s sweeping political crackdowns.
In January 2018, left, and January 2021, right, protesters gathered at Pushkin Square. (Photos by Arthur Bondar for The Washington Post)
Protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny met at Pushkin Square earlier this year. And it is where communists and liberals rallied on a rainy September night to protest 2021 parliamentary election results giving a landslide win to Putin’s United Russia party despite widespread claims of fraud.
Nearly 30 years after the fall of the U.S.S.R., Putin’s Russia carries some echoes of the stories lived out in Soviet times — censorship and repressions are returning. Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent in 2020 and later jailed. Many opposition figures and independent journalists have fled the country. The hope, sleaze and exhilaration of the 1990s have faded. Tverskaya Street has settled into calm stagnation, waiting for the next chapter.
Arthur Bondar contributed to this report.
About this story
Story editing by Robyn Dixon and Brian Murphy. Photos and videos by Arthur Bondar. Archival footage from the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk; footage of Joseph Stalin’s funeral from the Martin Manhoff Archive, courtesy of Douglas Smith. Photo editing by Chloe Coleman. Video editing by Jason Aldag. Design and development by Yutao Chen. Design editing by Suzette Moyer. Maps by Dylan Moriarty. Graphics editing by Lauren Tierney. Copy editing by Melissa Ngo.
While some Republicans laid blame on Trump for encouraging a mob to storm the Capitol last month to contest his 2020 presidential election loss, they continued to question the legality of an impeachment trial of a former president.
“I think I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to end the impeachment trial because I think it’s blatantly unconstitutional,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
However, the South Carolina senator suggested history would hold Trump responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In January, the House impeached Trump for a historic second time on charges of inciting the riot. Ten Republican lawmakers voted in favor of impeachment, with many acknowledging that casting such a vote likely meant the end of their political careers.
“He had a consequential presidency. Jan. 6 was a very bad day for America, and he’ll get his share of blame in history,” Graham said.
Graham said after the insurrection that Trump’s presidency had been “tarnished” by his role in the riot but that he did not back the use of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
Murphy said the chamber was undecided on whether to call witnesses in the trial because, unlike the phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for which Trump was impeached in 2019, “we saw what happened in real time. President Trump sent that angry mob to the Capitol on live TV, so it’s not as important that we have witnesses.”
Stephanopoulos brought up Wicker’s earlier comments that the impeachment of former President Clinton would “protect the long-term national interest of the United States, to affirm the importance of truth and honesty and to uphold the rule of law in our nation.”
Wicker responded that Clinton had been determined to have committed perjury, whereas “I’m not conceding that President Trump incited an insurrection.”
“The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment, and it doesn’t bend to partisanship. It doesn’t bend to political pressure,” Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s the most important oath that we take, and so I will stand by that, and I will continue to fight for all of the issues that matter so much to us all across Wyoming.”
Cheney did not say whether she would vote to convict Trump if she were in the Senate but said Republicans “should not be embracing the former president.”
BuzzFeed’s extraordinary report last night suggests that President Trump conspired to induce perjury and obstruct justice. It has excited many Democrats. But even if BuzzFeed is correct in its central assertion — that two federal law enforcement sources say Trump told his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress — I’m not convinced it’s a major problem for the president. Unless, that is, law enforcement has audio recordings of Trump or his most inner circle speaking to that effect.
The key here is the burden of proof. According to BuzzFeed, he “personally instructed [Cohen] to lie” to Congress about when the Trump organization ended its effort to build a hotel in Moscow. If this is true, Trump would appear to be guilty of at least three federal criminal offenses: obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy.
But it’s not enough for prosecutors to believe this to be true; they must be able to prove it. And from BuzzFeed’s report at least, it’s not at all clear if they have the means of doing so.
BuzzFeed claims that emails and interviews from Trump organization staffers have corroborated investigators’ belief in Trump’s guilt, but that’s unlikely to be enough to prosecute. What investigators need is a forensic, unimpeachable link that ties Trump to an unlawful conspiracy.
I sincerely doubt that emails or other notes would be enough because Trump’s defense team could allege someone else sent those notes without Trump’s knowledge or without his approval. But the biggest weakness here is Cohen himself. Whether you believe Cohen’s cooperation with the government is an act of contrition or an act to save himself from even more prison time, Cohen is ultimately a weak prosecution witness. He is a proven liar with an obvious conflict of interest. Any defense team would have a field day with Cohen. They would suggest that everything he says is about saving himself by offering up a bigger fish.
A winning prosecution would need forensic evidence that someone very close to the president, such as his son-in-law Jared Kushner or son Donald Trump Jr., was engaged in a conspiracy on the president’s behalf. Indeed, prosecutors would likely decline the case on the basis that the presumptive harm to the nation would outweigh the low likelihood of conviction.
This is not to say that Trump is out of the woods. He may face significantly more damaging revelations in relation to Russia in the months ahead.
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