President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping “will be having an extended meeting next week at the G-20 in Japan.”
In a tweet, Trump said that he and Xi “had a very good telephone conversation,” and that “our respective teams will begin talks prior to our meeting.”
Chinese state media reported shortly following the announcement that Xi had agreed to meet with Trump at the summit, scheduled for June 28-29 in Osaka.
Xi said he hoped that the U.S. treats Chinese companies fairly, according to Chinese media — a possible reference to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that faces a ban because of what the U.S. calls national security issues.
China had kept mum about whether Xi would agree to a face-to-face meeting with the U.S. president at the summit while the two economic superpowers remain locked in a heated trade dispute.
Trump has said he expected that meeting to occur at the high-profile summit, but had recently downplayed the impact that it could have on forging a trade deal with Beijing. Trump told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” last week that “it doesn’t matter ” if Xi attends the G-20 or not.
“If he shows up, good, if he doesn’t — in the meantime, we’re taking in billions of dollars a month [in tariffs] from China,” Trump told Fox.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Trump’s tweet.
Trump and China have slapped punitive tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of imports of each other’s goods. In May, Trump hiked up tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports, and threatened to slap duties on another $300 billion after talks stalled out that month.
Trump’s tweet came shortly before U.S. Trade Representative was scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee about the president’s 2019 trade policy agenda. Lighthizer was expected to focus mainly about the trilateral trade deal to replace NAFTA, called the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which was agreed upon by the three allied nations but has yet to make it through Congress.
But Lighthizer is likely to face questions about how the Trump administration’s next steps on the negotiations with China, where Democrats and some Republicans have harshly criticized the president’s use of tariffs.
Trump met with Xi at the prior G-20 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last December. The two leaders discussed the trade dispute and tariffs, as well as the U.S. opioid crisis.
While that summit was in full swing, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada and charged in Vancouver over allegations that the company defrauded banks by concealing payments from sanctioned Iran.
At least seven people died after Hurricane Ian pummeled Florida’s western coast with record storm surge flooding as high as 12 feet in some areas and intense winds, according to AP.
Two people died in a car crash on Thursday afternoon in Putnam County, which was inundated with rain as the storm passed over the state.
At least two people were confirmed dead on Sanibel, an island in southwest Florida that experienced major surge-related flooding during the storm.
A person in Lake County died on Wednesday after his vehicle hydroplaned, while another person was found dead in the city of Deltona in central Florida, according to AP.
The latest: The storm regained hurricane status on Thursday night on its way to a damaging encounter with the Carolinas and a portion of southern Georgia.
As of 11am ET, the storm was located 60 miles east-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and 120 miles south-southwest of Cape Fear, North Carolina, though it was moving north at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, the NHC said.
It is expected to make a second official landfall Friday afternoon in South Carolina, bringing with it heavy winds and “life-threatening” storm surge along the coasts of northeast Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
What they’re saying: The hurricane “is likely to rank among the worst in the nation’s history,” Biden said Friday at a press briefing. “You have all seen on television homes and property wiped out. It’s gonna take months, years to rebuild.”
Biden had said Thursday “this could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history.”
“We absolutely expect to have mortality from this hurricane,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a news briefing Thursday.
DeSantis said there were more than 700 confirmed rescues as of Thursday evening.
Some of the deadliest hurricanes in Florida tracked by the National Hurricane Center during the first half of the 20th century saw between around 350 and 1,800 deaths.
These deaths, also called “indirect deaths,” primarily arise from excessive heat and over-exertion and carbon monoxide poisoning from running generators indoors.
Ian made landfall as an “extremely dangerous” hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour on Florida’s southwestern coast on Wednesday near Cayo Costa, an island to the west of Cape Coral, according to the National Hurricane Center.
It then shifted north-northeast and made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph on mainland Florida just south of the city of Punta Gorda before barreling northeast across the state and weakening into a tropical storm.
DURHAM, N.C. — Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said he disagreed with some Trump administration policies — particularly on immigration — but dodged questions Wednesday about the president reportedly intervening to secure top-secret security clearances for his daughter Ivanka Trump and son–in–law, Jared Kushner.
Kelly, in an appearance at Duke University, did not deny reports that President Donald Trump circumvented the usual process to grant the security clearances or that he later wrote a memo outlining his concerns about it. He simply said he believes any such conversations with the president would be privileged and that he’s not at liberty to discuss security clearances.
It was a notable contrast to Kelly’s aggressive pushback on news reports while in the White House about his actions and relationship with Trump. On Wednesday he even stressed several times the importance of a free press.
Relatively subdued and cautious, Kelly landed some gloved swipes on his former boss — at one point saying if Trump’s former Democratic rival had won the presidency and asked him to serve, he would have worked for her.
“If Hillary Clinton had called me, I would have done it,” Kelly said.
The wide-ranging question-and-answer session before several hundred people marked the first time Kelly, who left the White House at the end of 2018 after a rocky tenure, has publicly addressed the president’s role in his family members’ security clearances.
A retired four-star general, Kelly initially served as Trump’s Homeland Security secretary. But it was the chief of staff job he took in July 2017 that he said was “the least enjoyable job I’ve ever had.”
“But it was he most important job I’ve ever had,” he said.
Kelly, though diplomatic, showed repeatedly where he disagreed with Trump on immigration issues.
On the administration’s handling of children at the southern border, he was critical, though he blamed then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for catching the White House by surprise with the adoption of a “zero tolerance” policy.
Contrary to Trump’s comments that many immigrants coming to the U.S. border are criminals, Kelly added: “And by the way, they’re overwhelmingly not criminals. They’re people coming up here for economic purposes. I don’t blame them for that.”
He didn’t defend Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency to get funding for a border wall and said: “We don’t need a wall from sea to shining sea.”
Kelly also expressed disagreement with deploying U.S. troops, even National Guard troops, to the border, as Trump did last fall before the midterm elections.
“Generally speaking I would always look for another way to do it,” Kelly said.
Asked about Trump’s executive order establishing a travel ban just days after taking office — while Kelly was Homeland Security secretary — he said it was a mistake made by inexperienced White House staff who didn’t run the policy through the usual process-gathering process for input from relevant government agencies.
The White House staff “got a little bit maybe out in front if their skis,” he said.
Kelly also defended the cost of maintaining the NATO alliance, the merits of which Trump has repeatedly questioned. And he took credit for initially organizing a series of briefings that convinced Trump not to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Syria.
When Trump tapped Kelly as his chief of staff the White House had little internal structure and was largely seen as chaotic. Kelly didn’t seem eager for the job and spent his initial weeks trying to install process and order to the West Wing.
Despite reports by NBC News and others that Kelly saw himself as the “adult in the room,” he denied taking that view.
“In my view everyone in the room was an adult,” he said.
When he decided it was time to leave, saying the job exhausted him, he joked that the advice he gave to his successor, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, was: “Run for it.”
Carol E. Lee is a national political reporter for NBC News.
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Former President George W. Bush remembers former President George H.W. Bush’s love for his country, his family and a good laugh during his eulogy for his dad. USA TODAY
As many Americans watched the funeral services for President George H.W. Bush this week, Isa Leshko found herself tuning out the coverage. Things were missing. Recent events glossed over. It left her feeling sickened, she said.
Shortly after news broke of Bush’s death, Leshko, 47, an artist and activist, took to Twitter.
“Many members of the LGBTQ community, people of color, and women have a hard time praising Bush’s memory today,” she wrote, launching a threaded series of tweets.
She touched on Bush’s handling of the AIDS crisis, his veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1990. Near the end of her thread, Leshko brought up a more recent controversy that she and other activists have found questionably absent from remembrances and discussions of Bush’s legacy: the groping allegations.
A little more than a year before his death, allegations emerged from eight women dating back to 1992. The details were similar: During a photo op with the former president, Bush touched or squeezed their butts without consent. Some of the women say he made a joke first.
Bush apologized last year through spokesman Jim McGrath, saying he “does not have it in his heart to knowingly cause anyone distress, and he again apologizes to anyone he offended during a photo op.”
With attention focused on other men who were still in office or high-powered jobs, involved in severe incidents, the allegations have received little mention since they first came to light in October 2017. USA TODAY, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press did not include the allegations in obituaries. Headlines praised his decency and character and called him a gentleman. Even in Twitter’s liberal bubbles, the topic has been cautiously broached.
I’m gonna get in a lot of trouble, but isn’t it a bit odd that people are now speaking so highly of George HW Bush when not long ago several allegations surfaced of him groping women?
Michelle Nickerson, an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago who specializes in women and gender and U.S. politics, says memorializations happen with every president.
“The purpose in this case is to recognize ourselves as a nation. So it’s almost like we keep quiet about the mistakes of the dead because we want to focus on the things that we appreciate and we value and the things that we want to honor,” Nickerson said. “There are going to be things that we recall and we chose to forget because we are honoring not just Bush but the presidency as an institution.”
Yale University history professor Joanne B. Freeman says these remembrances, and presidential legacies, are shaped by current political climates. And in this case, she says, the need for a retort to the increasingly caustic political landscape has been palpable in our eulogizing.
“It feels to me like a very emotionally needy moment that’s making use of Bush’s reputation to serve a purpose,” said Freeman. “It’s become a mourning for decency moment that really isn’t about Bush at all.”
Using a polished version of a president’s reputation for specific ends is “a tradition that goes back to the dawn of the republic,” Freeman says.
Anyone who has seen the musical Hamilton knows the story of the Federalist Party’s attempt to discredit Alexander Hamilton as a co-author of George Washington’s farewell address to make Washington, and in turn the party, look better.
But Freeman says this moment is unique in its near-total focus on Bush’s character as opposed to his political impact. A record that includes unwavering support for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Bush’s nominee who was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill in a grueling confirmation process that activists say paved the way for the similarly contentious confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The problem, for activists and survivors of sexual assault, is that the exaltation of Bush as a “gentleman” and “America’s last great soldier-statesman” feels incomplete.
“Which part of him was ‘boy-next-door bonhomie’ when he groped numerous women?” says Elizabeth Xu Tang, an equal justice fellow with the National Women’s Law Center, referencing a New Yorker tribute.
“We’ve sanitized the history of so many things,” Tang says. “To start that process immediately, the second they die, is so irresponsible, it’s untruthful.”
Tang notes that Bush’s last tweet praised Sen. Susan Collins for her “political courage and class” following her vote to confirm Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault; he denies any wrongdoing.
Bush “felt that it was necessary to publicly speak out about [someone accused of] serial sexual assault, and that it was commendable and courageous,” Tang says. “I think that tells you everything you need to know about his thoughts on #MeToo and sexual assault and women’s bodily autonomy.”
Leshko, too, noted the tweet.
“The fact that the Kavanaugh hearing and confirmation is still raw for so many women, and recognizing that his final tweet was in support of Kavanaugh, it just makes it really hard for me to hear people say he harkens back to a kinder and gentler time in our politics,” Leshko said. “If you actually look back on certain periods of history as kinder and gentler, odds are you benefit from privilege you’re not fully aware of.”
An overwhelming response to mentions of the groping allegations, as well as other Bush critiques, has been “not now.” Vox, one of the few media outlets to broach the allegations and Bush’s legacy, was met with derisive replies on Twitter, saying the decision to publish a day after his death was “disgusting” and “uncalled for.”
“We have this powerful cultural belief you’re not supposed to talk badly about people who have died,” said Mahri Irvine, an adjunct lecturer on race, gender and culture studies at American University. “Now that they’re dead we can’t bring up anything bad or shady about their past.”
This extends beyond presidents to celebrities but everyday Americans, as well. It’s why stigmatized issues, like suicide, remain rarely mentioned after someone dies and why candid obituaries about drug use go viral.
Part of the reason for glossing over, says Irvine, is that many people struggle with duality.
“You can have men, and you do, who genuinely are kind, compassionate, respectful, care for children and care for their spouses, who are very kind and good to most people,” and behave differently around others.
Nickerson said in terms of presidential legacy, it’s important to embrace complexity.
“It’s appropriate to do it as soon as possible lest we fail to recognize all of this as part of a collective legacy, the good and the bad, the warts and all,” she said.
Many people want to ignore complexity, but when that happens with someone as powerful as a president, historians say it can be problematic.
“When something becomes complicated, one rather useless response is ‘Oh, we’ll just not say anything about it at all.’ Which makes matters worse by erasing it,” said Freeman. “There are all kinds of populations and constituencies that get erased that way. Until recently, race was a non-issue for Thomas Jefferson, and … think of all the people who were thereby erased, all the people who were not included in history.”
Irvine says women’s voices are often erased.
“Women and girls are taught, even if they have a very valid complaint about something, they need to be polite and respectful,” Irvine said. “By telling Bush’s victims that they need to stay silent right now, or by complaining about reporters who are going to cover the topic, it’s reinforcing this patriarchal idea that women’s voices are less important and less valued than dead men’s.”
Women are told it’s never a good time for sexual allegations, Tang said: When a young woman accuses a young man, it’s not the right time because the boy has his whole life ahead of him. In middle age, it’ll ruin the man’s reputation at the height of his career. When men are old, it’s dismissed as having happened so long ago. And after death, it’s unacceptable to speak ill of the dead.
It’s that frustration that inspired Leshko to speak out.
“I have total empathy for the Bush family. They had two major losses in seven months. I understand that,” she said. “But I think expressing these viewpoints is important, particularly while his legacy is being discussed in the public eye. Bush wasn’t my father, he wasn’t my uncle. He was my president and his actions had significant consequences for people in this country and abroad. It needs to be considered part of the legacy.”
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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, second from left, with wife Columba, and former President George W. Bush, center, with wife Laura, and other family members, watch as the flag-draped casket of former President George H.W. Bush is carried by a joint services military honor guard after if arrived by train for burial at the George Bush Presidential Library, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018, in College Station. Eric Gay, AP
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, listen during a State Funeral for former President George H.W. Bush at the Washington National Cathedral, Dec. 5, 2018, in Washington. Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
Congressional leaders from left to right, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., watch as a U.S. military honor guard carries the flag-draped casket of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush from the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, in Washington. Pool photo by Win McNamee
From right, former President George W. Bush, second from right, former first lady Laura Bush, Neil Bush, Sharon Bush, Bobby Koch, Doro Koch, Jeb Bush and Columba Bush, stand just prior to the flag-draped casket of former President George H.W. Bush being carried by a joint services military honor guard from the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, in Washington. Pool photo by Alex Brandon
Former Vice President Joe Biden, fourth from left, and his wife Jill Biden, second from left, speak with Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Donald Trump, third from left, and her husband, President Donald Trump’s White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, third from right, as former Vice President Al Gore, second from right, speak to former President Jimmy Carter, right, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, bottom center, before a State Funeral for former President George H.W. Bush at the National Cathedral, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, in Washington. AP
Tiffany Utterson, right, and her children, from left to right, Ella, 11, Ian, 10 and Owen, 8, place a wreath outside the gated community entrance to the home of George H.W. Bush Sunday, Dec. 2, 2018, in Houston. David J. Phillip, AP
Caroline Cyboran, of Kingwood, Texas, looks at an exhibit while visting the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum Saturday, Dec. 1, 2018, in College Station. Bush has died at age 94. Family spokesman Jim McGrath says Bush died shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 30, 2018, about eight months after the death of his wife, Barbara Bush. David J. Phillip, AP
Detail of a scarf print from the Beyond Buckskin Boutique. Photo courtesy of shop.beyondbuckskin.com. Download Full Image
Morris said by spearheading innovative partnerships and leveraging resources from ASU, tribes and community organizations, she hopes that Inno-NATIONS will create a “collision community,” causing a ripple effect of economic change in tribal communities.
Both events are free and take place at The Department in downtown Phoenix.
Inno-NATIONS will also launch a three-day pilot cohort with approximately 20 Native American businesses starting in June.
“Beyond Buckskin” features Jessica Metcalfe, a Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Dartmouth graduate and entrepreneur, who grew a small online store into a successful boutique on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
The store promotes and sells Native American-made couture, streetwear, jewelry, and accessories from more than 40 Native American and First Nations artist, employing tribe members from the Turtle Mountain community.
ASU Now spoke to Metcalfe to discuss her work.
Jessica Metcalfe
Question: We’ve seen Native American fashion emerge and evolve. How did you get into the business?
Answer: I was writing my master’s thesis in 2005 and my advisor at the time had told me about some research she had done, which looked at Native American fashion in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. She had wondered if I was interested in picking up where her research left off. I looked into it and found that there were these breadcrumbs, little bits here in there, that something had been going on in the past 60-70 years, but hadn’t been looked at as a collective movement.
Through my doctoral dissertation, what I discovered was that Native American fashion has gone through waves of acknowledgements by the broader public, but what we’re experiencing now is perhaps the biggest wave yet.
You have designers like Patricia Michaels out at New York’s Style Fashion Week and the Native Fashion Now traveling exhibit touring the country, so there’s really a lot of exciting things happening lately. It’s coming from a collective movement. Designers basically grouping together to share costs but also to put together more events to cause a bigger ruckus.
Q: How did you build your online store into a brick-and-mortar business?
A: I first launched a blog in 2009 as an outlet for my dissertation research, and wanted to share it with more people and to also get more stories and experiences. My readers kept asking where could they see and buy these clothes? At that time, there wasn’t an easy way to access functions like a Native American Pow Wow or market in order to do that.
I had established a rapport with designers through my research and writing. They saw what I was doing through the blog and then a question popped into my head. “How would you feel about creating a business together?” There were 11 initial designers who said they needed the space, and I worked with them to sell their goods online. We just now opened our design lab on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. We are creating a system where we can meet demand and maximize a need in Indian Country.
We employ Native Americans from ages 15 to 22. There aren’t a whole lot of opportunities for people that age on the reservation. They either work at the grocery store or the gas station. One of them is interested in film and photography and so they run our photo shoots. Another person is interested in business entrepreneurship, and they get to see how an idea goes from concept to execution.
Q: The subtext is that this isn’t just about fashion but, history, representation and cultural appropriation?
A: Our clothing is just more than just objects. It’s about how the material was gathered, what the colors represent, what stories are being told and how does that tie into our value system. One of the things I often discuss is the Native American headdress. Our leaders wear them as a symbol of their leadership and the dedication to their communities. These stories are a way to share our culture with non-Natives and protect our legacy for future generations.
Q: Why is it important for Native American businesses to branch out into other cultures?
A: Native American people desperately need to diversify their economic opportunities on and off the reservations. Up until recently, people haven’t thought of fashion or art as a viable career path.
A recent study conducted by First Peoples Fund that found a third of all Native American people are practicing or are potential artists. That is a huge resource we already have in Indian Country and we need to tap it and develop it, and push for Natives in various fields to look at themselves as entrepreneurs and launching businesses.
Now, Native American people have an opportunity to make a positive impact in their local communities by reaching people through their art and sharing our culture with the rest of the world.
Until this week, Trump had issued only threats to regulate or penalize Facebook, Google-owned YouTube and Twitter over a range of claims, even suggesting at one point that the industry tried to undermine his election. Previously, however, the White House has backed down, even shelving prior versions of its executive order targeting social media companies.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz delivered scathing testimony Wednesday about the FBI’s missteps in applying for a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.
Horowitz was grilled for nearly six hours by lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Republicans and Democrats using their time to advance competing narratives about the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
Here are five takeaways from the hearing on the inspector general’s inquiry.
It was a bad day for the FBI
Horowitz’s testimony laid bare the extent of the breakdown in the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, a point Republicans repeatedly hammered.
The inspector general reported a total of 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the applications to monitor Page, taking particular issue with applications to renew the FISA warrant and chastising the FBI for a lack of satisfactory explanations for those mistakes.
The FBI got a reprieve from many Democratic lawmakers who expressed admiration for its work and sought to underscore Horowitz’s finding that the bureau was not influenced by political bias in launching its investigation.
Horowitz’s criticism of the FBI offered plenty of talking points for Trump and his defenders, some of whom have distorted the conclusions of the report to baselessly accuse agents of a politically motivated effort to investigate the Trump campaign.
The inspector general turned up evidence that an FBI lawyer altered a document in connection with a renewal application for the Page warrant, a detail that Trump and Republicans have seized on.
Horowitz reiterated that he found no testimonial or documentary evidence of political bias or other improper motivation driving the FBI’s decision to open the counterintelligence investigation — dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane” — into the Trump campaign and Russia.
Horowitz also said that it was his conclusion that the investigation was adequately predicated. Those findings and other details of the report have undercut arguments made by Trump and his allies about the impropriety of the investigation.
But at the same time, Horowitz said that the explanations his office received from officials about the errors and omissions were not “satisfactory” and was careful about making a definitive statement about a lack of bias in the attorney’s actions with respect to the warrant.
Republicans argued that the mistakes made during the course of the investigation were deliberate and malicious.
“It may have started lawfully. It got off the rails quick,” Graham said. “It became a criminal conspiracy to defraud the FISA court, to put Mr. Page through hell, and to continue to surveil President Trump after he got elected. And I hope somebody pays a price for that.”
Rare agreement for reform of the process
Republicans and Democrats appeared in agreement on one thing following Wednesday’s hearing: the need for changes to the FISA program to avoid the missteps Horowitz identified in his report.
“If the [FISA] court doesn’t take corrective action and do something about being manipulated and lied to, you will lose my support,” Graham said, adding that he would like to see more “checks and balances.”
“I’d welcome suggestions from FBI Director [Christopher] Wray … to ensure the errors we saw here in the Page process don’t happen again,” Coons said, adding there should be considerations for civil liberties as well.
Horowitz said the inspector general’s office does not make legislative recommendations to Congress, but instead would relay its suggestions within the Justice Department about how the FISA process could be improved.
Horowitz resists political fight
The watchdog chose his words carefully throughout Wednesday’s appearance.
He tiptoed around some of the more politically charged questions from members, seeking to avoid wading into debates about whether the president’s campaign was “spied” on and declining to speculate on matters beyond his report.
Horowitz also declined to weigh in on Barr’s disagreement with his findings after the attorney general issued a statement Monday saying the investigation had been launched on the “thinnest” of suspicions.
“He’s free to have his opinion. We have our finding,” Horowitz said.
His effort to avoid political statements did not come as a surprise; Horowitz, a former assistant U.S. attorney, has been described as an independent voice and a straight shooter who seeks to stay away from politics.
Spotlight on internal Justice Department disagreements
Horowitz’s testimony offered new details about the daylight between him and some top Justice Department officials over his finding that the investigation was adequately predicated.
He also said he met with Durham in November to discuss his findings, at which point Durham told Horowitz he believed the FBI would have been justified in opening a “preliminary investigation,” but not a full one.
“He said that he did not necessarily agree with our conclusion about the opening of a full counterintelligence investigation, which is what this was,” Horowitz recalled.
Horowitz also said he communicated with Barr, who also disagreed with the conclusion as to the predicate, before the report’s release.
“None of the discussions changed our findings here,” Horowitz said.
Barr elaborated on his opinions during an NBC News interview Tuesday, calling the FBI’s case “flimsy” and saying the steps taken were not justified by the evidence.
Quién le teme a Marcos Peña: Secretos del mariscal zen de Macri. La pulseada que terminó con Prat-Gay e Isela Costantini fuera del Gobierno. Vacaciones en Uruguay y pasado de mochilero. Las bromas por su humilde patrimonio. Además: el mandato de su tatuaje chino.
Ministro pequeño, lobby grande: Por qué la City y Clarín festejan el nombramiento de Nicolás Dujovne. El verdadero vínculo con Trump. Denuncian presiones de su padre para construir en Puerto Madero.
Provocación: a 20 años del crimen, liberan a Prellezo, el asesino de José Luis Cabezas.
La nueva perla K en Miami: US$ 2,2 millones por un piso en Key Biscaine. Está a nombre de la esposa de Pablo Copetti, hijo del ex tesorero del Frente para la Victoria, Raúl Copetti.
Además:
María del Cerro: llegó a la semifinal del “Bailando por un sueño” y conduce dos series por Discovery. La seguridad que ganó al ser madre y cómo la movilizó hacer pública su historia familiar.
Febo asoma: Los especialistas recomiendan unos 20 minutos diarios de sol, con protección en verano. Los peligros de la falta de vitamina D.
Two weeks ago, as she was preparing to walk across the graduation stage and finish her high school career, she got a call from March for Our Lives: It was time to organize.
“Most of the work was done by me and my co-director,” she said. “We both just graduated high school, and we spent two full weeks, night and day, getting everything we could.”
The result was a turnout of at least hundreds of people of all ages — Schramkowski said about 2,000 people RSVPed, but she thinks the number of people who took part was likely double that.
Marches against gun violence were planned in other cities across Georgia, including Marietta, Snellville, Gainesville, Columbus and Augusta. The national effort is a renewed push for gun control measures after recent deadly mass shootings — from the Uvalde, Texas, school where 19 students and two teachers were killed, to a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, where 10 people died.
Of those in attendance was 16-year-old Leah Cox. She brought her dad with her to the march to support a cause they both strongly believe in.
“I’ve grown up seeing these shootings on the TV screen, being reported for my entire life, and I think this is the least I could do to show my support,” she said. “Our schools should not be built to be bulletproof. You should be able to be in institutions of learning and not have to worry about gun safety and what could happen in the next moment.”
Like many protesters, Leah said she was deeply impacted by the Parkland shooting. She was in seventh grade at the time.
“I think hearing and seeing the coverage of this of the shooting, and the helicopters are hovering the school and seeing all the kids that had to run out and file out for safety, and hearing about how so many people died, I think it was really shocking to me,” Leah said.
Her father, Tyrone Cox, said he has always believed in gun control. When comparing today’s gun violence in schools to when he was in school, he says the difference is “unimaginable.”
“I think it’s just senseless,” he said. “And I think that all the politicians need to be held accountable.”
Many other parents were in attendance, both on their own and with their children in tow. One group, Moms Demand Action, had many protesters sporting their bright red T-shirts.
“I don’t want to be afraid for my children when they’re in college, but it happens on college campuses too,” mother Tommie Campbell said. “We just got to end this gun violence immediately. We can’t have the police afraid to go in and save children because they’re armed with more gun power than they are.”
Campbell, brought to tears while describing why she’s marching, said “something’s gotta be done.”
“I guess I understand that people are afraid, and they want to protect themselves, but I don’t think it’s acceptable to have machine guns,” she said.
The approximately one-mile march, which started at Ebenezer Baptist Church and ended at Woodruff Park, was punctuated by passionate speeches from community leaders and politicians, including U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath and Georgia NAACP President Gerald Griggs.
Nearly every speaker mentioned the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis. Lewis marched alongside protesters in 2018 in Atlanta’s first March for Our Lives. That year’s rally, which happened less than two months after 17 students and adults were killed in the Parkland school shooting, featured student survivors as speakers and drew about 30,000 downtown.
On Saturday, Williams told the crowd, “Each of you is building on the legacy of my friend, my mentor, my predecessor, the late John Lewis.”
Credit: Reann Huber
Credit: Reann Huber
Credit: Reann Huber
Credit: Reann Huber
“Y’all, I’m proud of y’all,” Griggs said as he looked out into the crowd at Woodruff Park. “John would be proud of you right now. Martin (Luther King Jr.) would be proud of you right now. This is the birthplace of civil rights. But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: We’re also the birthplace of social justice. So let’s send a message to Washington. The message is, protect these young people’s lives.”
El presidente de Rusia, Vladimir Putin, dijo este lunes que sospecha que Turquía le compra petróleo al autodenominado Estado Islámico y vinculó ese hecho con el derribo del avión en la frontera con Siria.
“Tenemos todos los motivos para suponer que la decisión de derribar el avión fue dictada por el deseo de garantizar la seguridad de las vías de suministro de petróleo al territorio de Turquía”, dijo Putin en rueda de prensa en París, donde asiste a la cumbre del clima.
Putin ordenó imponer sanciones económicas a Turquía después de que Ankara se negara a pedir disculpas por haber derribado un caza bombardero SU-24 el pasado 24 de noviembre.
Las autoridades turcas alegaron una supuesta violación de su espacio aéreo. El Departamento de Estado de EE.UU. dijo tener pruebas de la existencia de esa violación.
Por su parte, también en París, el presidente turco, Recep Tayyip Erdogán, prometió dimitir si alguien prueba que su país derribó el avión ruso para proteger el suministro petrolero desde E.I.
Y retó a Putin a hacer lo mismo.
“Si se demuestra, yo no me quedaré en el cargo. Y le digo al señor Putin, ¿se quedará usted en su cargo?”, dijo Erdogán a los medios.
Aunque tanto Putin como Erdogán están en París, y el turco mostró interés en celebrar un encuentro, el Kremlin lo descartó.
Con quien sí se reunió Putin para abordar la situación siria fue con la canciller alemana, Angela Merkel.
Ambos hablaron de la lucha contra Estado Islámico pocos días después de que el ruso tratara el asunto con el presidente francés, François Hollande.
Trump in a statement slammed the Republicans who voted in favor of the panel, accusing them of not supporting their party, which he called “ineffective and weak.”
“This is the Grand Old Party, the party’s done so much for our country. And quite frankly, many Republicans have courageously withstood the — shall we say — the assault on our democracy that is going forth,” she said.
“When you think of the Republicans and you think courage that they’ve had in the electoral system in our country and election decisions that have been made to support the fact that the election was legitimate. Many Republicans were the ones who came forward,” she added.
Five people died before, during or after the Capitol attack, including a Capitol police officer.
Trump recently called for the debate on the commission to end “immediately” on Tuesday.
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The Duchess of Cambridge made an unannounced visit in south London Saturday, to the memorial held for Sarah Everard, a 33-year old woman whose remains were discovered Friday.
Everard went missing after leaving a friend’s apartment around 9 p.m on March 3. She is believed to have been abducted and killed by a police officer who was charged Friday.
Kate Middleton, 39, visited the memorial set up for Everard in Clapham Common, a neighborhood near her home in Brixton, and where she was last spotted before her disappearance.
“She wanted to pay her respects to Sarah and her family,” a royal source told PEOPLE. “She remembers what it felt like to walk around London at night.”
Middleton stopped in front of the memorial with other women paying tribute to Everard, whose case has captured international attention.
The murder of the 33-year old has forced many to take to social media to question why women continue to be threatened by predators, and share personal stories of attacks or their communal fears of violence when walking home at night.
“When she went missing, any woman who has ever walked home alone at night felt that grim, instinctive sense of recognition,” columnist Gaby Hinsliff wrote in The Guardian. “Footsteps on a dark street. Keys gripped between your fingers. There but for the grace of God.”
Constable Wayne Couzens, 48, a member of the London police’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command has been arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder.
He was set to appear in court Saturday.
Organizers planned a vigil in Everard’s memory Saturday, but due to coronavirus restrictions the ceremony was not permitted to be carried out.
“No woman in London should be unsafe on London’s streets and I understand the strength of feeling that has grown following Sarah’s disappearance,” Metropolitan Police Commander Catherine Roper said in a statement Friday. “As a woman and a police officer, I want nothing more than for women to feel safe and protected by the police.”
“But we need to be clear. Our city is still in a battle with Covid-19 with people continuing to be infected and sadly losing their lives. Only a few weeks ago our NHS was at breaking point, we cannot risk undoing all the hard work to reduce the infection rate,” she added.
Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged during a news conference in Rome that he listened in on the call, on which Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son.
Current and former U.S. officials also told The Washington Post that Trump involved Vice President Pence in efforts to pressure Zelensky at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to Biden.
The former vice president, meanwhile, told reporters at a forum on guns that the president’s actions were “beyond anything I frankly thought he would do.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a television interview that she believes Trump is “scared” of the inquiry.
●Impeachment inquiry erupts into battle between executive, legislative branches
6:15 p.m.: Trump on Schiff: ‘They should look at him for treason’
Trump on Wednesday renewed his attacks on Schiff by arguing that the California Democrat should be tried for treason — which is defined as aiding an enemy with which the United States is at war.
“It should be criminal,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, referring to Schiff’s characterization of his phone call with Zelensky at a hearing last week. “It should be treasonous. … He should resign from office in disgrace, and frankly, they should look at him for treason.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Trump’s assertion that Schiff committed treason. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether Trump has directed his administration to pursue legal action against Schiff.
The U.S. Constitution defines treason as the act of someone who, “owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere.”
While the common usage of the term can be very broad, the legal definition of treason is limited to Americans who act on behalf of a country with which the United States is at war. There are fewer than three dozen treason convictions in U.S. history, including during World War II and the Whiskey Rebellion.
— Devlin Barrett
6 p.m.: Trump involved Pence in efforts to press Ukraine’s leader, though aides say vice president was unaware of pursuit for dirt on Bidens
Trump repeatedly involved Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.
Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Zelensky in May — an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar — at a time when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.
Months later, the president used Pence to tell Zelensky that U.S. aid was still being withheld while demanding more aggressive action on corruption, officials said. At that time — after Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenksy — the Ukrainians probably understood action on corruption to include the investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
4:45 p.m.: Biden: ‘It’s way beyond anything I frankly thought he would do.’
Biden told reporters that he was surprised that Trump asked a foreign leader for help getting information that could damage his presidential campaign, saying, “It’s way beyond anything I frankly thought he would do.”
Biden, who spoke to reporters at a forum on gun violence in Las Vegas, was told that the president that afternoon had referred to Biden and his son Hunter as “stone cold crooked.” Asked whether he has spoken to his son about any of the controversy, Biden said they’d “communicated a couple times.”
“Look, the issue is — this president of the United States engaged in something apparently that is close to, well, engaged in activity which, at minimum, gives a lot of running room for the Russians and Ukraine, and I think we should just focus on — he’s the issue,” Biden said. “Nobody has ever asserted that I did anything wrong except he and what’s that fellow’s name? Rudy? … Giuliani?”
— Chelsea Janes
4:15 p.m.: Buttigieg and Castro dodge questions about whether they’d allow their vice president’s child to serve on a foreign board
Pete Buttigieg and Julián Castro, both 2020 candidates, were asked whether they’d allow the son or daughter of their vice president to serve on a foreign board as former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter did in Ukraine.
Both candidates dismissed the question as doing Trump’s bidding.
“So one thing that is really important right now is to deny this president to change the subject, and the subject is that the president confessed on national television to an abuse of power. Let’s deal with that and not get caught in the shiny objects he’s going to throw out,” Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., said.
Castro, who was housing and urban development secretary in the Obama administration, said the question allows Trump to “use the same playbook against Joe Biden as he used against Hillary Clinton.”
“He’s trying to besmirch the reputation of an honorable public servant who has given a lot of honest years of public service so that he can try and win a narrow electoral college victory,” Castro said.
Buttigieg and Castro each spoke to reporters after speaking at a forum on gun violence. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) were asked about impeachment and their role as jurors if the Senate holds trial, but not the specific question related to Hunter Biden.
— Chelsea Janes
3:30 p.m.: White House will preserve records of Trump’s communications, Justice Department says
Justice Department attorneys promised a federal judge Wednesday that the White House will not destroy records of the president’s calls and meetings with foreign leaders while the court weighs a lawsuit brought by historians and watchdog groups.
In a two-page filing, Justice Department lawyer Kathryn L. Wyer told a federal judge in Washington that the Trump administration and executive office of the president “voluntarily agree … to preserve the material at issue pending” litigation.
The filing came after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington, D.C., on Tuesday set a 3 p.m. deadline for the government after the suing groups requested a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit filed in May to compel the administration to comply with the federal Presidential Records Act.
Three organizations — government watchdog groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, and National Security Archive, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations — alleged that the White House was failing to create and save records as required of Trump’s meetings and communications with foreign leaders.
The lawsuit preceded the current storm surrounding a Democratic House impeachment inquiry into the White House. However, the plaintiffs on Tuesday asked Jackson for an emergency order, saying the whistleblower’s complaint and the White House’s subsequent’s admissions exposed record keeping practices “specifically designed to conceal the president’s abuse of his power,” CREW said in a statement.
The Justice Department has moved to dismiss the lawsuit, saying appeals courts have precluded courts from weighing in on presidents’ compliance with the archiving law, “not to mention the President’s broad authority to negotiate with foreign leaders.”
— Spencer Hsu
3:15 p.m.: Trump doesn’t answer when asked what he wanted from Ukraine on Bidens
During Wednesday’s joint news conference, Trump refused to answer what exactly he wanted from the Ukrainian president regarding Joe and Hunter Biden.
Instead, Trump ignored the question and focused his answer on why he held back military aid to Ukraine, citing, as he has in the past, corruption in Ukraine and the unsubstantiated claim that the United States is the “only one who gives the big money to Ukraine.”
When Reuters’s Jeff Mason tried again and again to ask the Biden-specific question, Trump became angry and demanded that Mason “not be rude” and instead ask a question of the Finnish president. When Mason pressed him, Trump responded that “Biden and his son are stone cold crooked,” then leveled his oft-made attack against the “fake news” media.
3 p.m.: With no evidence, Trump accuses Schiff of having helped write whistleblower complaint
At a fiery joint news conference late Wednesday afternoon with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, Trump continued to lash out at Schiff, accusing him, with no evidence, of having helped write the whistleblower’s complaint.
Trump made the comment in response to a question about a New York Times report stating that Schiff had learned the outlines of the whistleblower’s concerns days before the individual filed a formal complaint.
“Well, I think it’s a scandal that he knew before,” Trump said of Schiff. “I’d go a step further. I think he probably helped write it, okay? That’s what the word is. … He knew long before, and he helped write it, too. It’s a scam. It’s a scam.”
Schiff said in a statement ahead of the news conference that “at no point did the Committee review or receive the complaint in advance,” and that his panel did not receive the complaint until the night before acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified last Thursday.
The whistleblower first contacted the Intelligence Committee “for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the Intelligence Community,” Schiff said.
“This is a regular occurrence, given the Committee’s unique oversight role and responsibilities,” he said, adding that “consistent with the Committee’s long-standing procedures, Committee staff appropriately advised the whistleblower to contact an Inspector General and to seek legal counsel.”
2:10 p.m.: Pelosi said Trump ‘scared’ of impeachment inquiry
Pelosi said during a television interview Wednesday that she believes Trump is “scared” of the impeachment inquiry being led by House Democrats.
“I think the president knows the argument that can be made against him, and he’s scared,” Pelosi said in an interview with ABC News, excerpts of which were released Wednesday afternoon. “And so he’s trying to divert attention from that to where [he’s] standing in the way of legislation.”
ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi whether Trump had fear in his voice when the two spoke last week before her announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry in response to the whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s call with Zelensky.
“I saw the surprise in his voice that he didn’t understand that I thought what he did was wrong,” Pelosi said. “That he was undermining our national security, that he was undermining our Constitution by his actions, and he was undermining the integrity of our elections. He just didn’t see it.”
1:30 p.m.: California’s governor offers a rejoinder to Trump
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) took to Twitter to respond to Trump’s comments about him during a 13-minute stretch of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Niinistö in which they fielded questions from reporters.
In the midst of insults directed at Pelosi and Schiff, Trump also derided Newsom as “a do-nothing” as he complained about a California law that would keep him off the primary ballot in the state next year if he doesn’t publicly release his taxes.
“Hello @realDonaldTrump…heard you just gave me a shout out in the Oval Office,” Newsom tweeted. “Actually watched your press conference — mainly just feel bad for the poor President of Finland who had to endure that. Today, we are all Sauli Niinistö.”
Hello @realDonaldTrump…heard you just gave me a shout out in the Oval Office.
Actually watched your press conference — mainly just feel bad for the poor President of Finland who had to endure that.
12:50 p.m.: Trump says identity of the whistleblower’s sources should be public
Trump, during an event in the Oval Office, called for the identity of those who provided information to the whistleblower to be publicly disclosed.
“This country has to find out who that person was, because that person’s a spy, in my opinion,” Trump told reporters while visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinistö looked on.
The whistleblower said his complaint was based on conversations with more than a half dozen U.S. officials.
In his remarks Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that there is value in protecting the identity of whistleblowers in some cases.
“I think a whistleblower should be protected if the whistleblower’s legitimate,” he said.
Trump also expanded on grievances aired earlier Wednesday on Twitter and took repeated shots at Schiff and Pelosi.
The president called Schiff “a low life” and a “shifty dishonest guy” and again called for him to resign.
Among other things, Trump took issue with Schiff having criticized Pompeo, saying “that guy couldn’t carry his blank strap.” Trump said he was trying to sanitize a common phrase about carrying a jock strap.
Trump suggested Pelosi should focus on her San Francisco-area congressional district, where he said there are people living in tents and “people dying in squalor.”
12:15 p.m.: State Department employees feel caught in the middle, diplomat says
Many State Department employees feel that they are caught in the middle of a political battle between the agency and House committees, said a U.S. diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment frankly about the adverse impact on morale.
Career Foreign Service officers are expected to follow the direction of State Department leadership and respond to congressional requests. It may not be possible to do both now.
“People are not politicized, and they’re very anxious not to be,” the diplomat said, referring to a number of clashes, including the impeachment inquiry, the pressure on Ukraine that led to the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Kiev and a reopened investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. “They want to do their jobs, serve their country and not be pulled into this.”
The diplomat has not spoken to anyone who feels bullied and intimidated, as Pompeo characterized the reaction to congressional outreach.
But the diplomat said employees expect Pompeo to defend them more vociferously than he has so far. The gold standard, still recalled with admiration in Foggy Bottom, the diplomat said, was set by George Shultz when he was secretary of state. In 1985, he threatened to resign over a Reagan administration proposal to require lie detector tests for all employees with access to highly classified information.
“The idea is that the secretary of state should stand up for them,” the diplomat said. Of Pompeo, he added: “There have been some generic comments, but nothing specific. The expectation is he should say more, and do more.”
— Carol Morello
11:50 a.m.: Trump insults Pelosi and Schiff, uses profanity to describe inquiry
Trump continued to hurl insults at Pelosi and Schiff as they conducted their news conference, and he later referred to the impeachment inquiry as “BULLSHIT.”
Writing on Twitter, Trump dismissed comments by Pelosi that House Democrats continue to want to work with the White House on trade and lowering prescription drug prices.
“She is incapable of working on either,” Trump said of Pelosi. “It is just camouflage for trying to win an election through impeachment. The Do Nothing Democrats are stuck in mud!”
Trump also sought to make the case that Schiff compares unfavorably to Pompeo.
“Adam B. Schiff should only be so lucky to have the brains, honor and strength of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” Trump tweeted. “For a lowlife like Schiff, who completely fabricated my words and read them to Congress as though they were said by me, to demean a First in Class at West Point, is SAD!”
At a hearing last week, Schiff presented an embellished version of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. He later said it was meant as a parody and said that should have been apparent to Trump.
Shortly after the new conference wrapped up, Trump returned to Twitter.
“The Do Nothing Democrats should be focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016, 223-306,” he wrote, referring to the electoral college results in the election. “Get a better candidate this time, you’ll need it!”
Trump’s tweet did not accurately convey the final electoral college results. Because of “faithless electors” who ended up voting for other people, Clinton’s final electoral college tally was 227, reduced from 232, and Trump’s went from 306 to 304.
11:30 a.m.: Schiff says, ‘We’re not fooling around here’
Schiff warned the White House on Wednesday that stonewalling could lead to an additional article of impeachment on obstruction of justice.
“We’re not fooling around here,” Schiff said as he appeared with Pelosi at a news conference on Capitol Hill shortly after House Democrats announced that they would subpoena the White House for documents. The subpoena will go out this week or next, Schiff said.
Democrats, he added, “are deeply concerned about Secretary Pompeo’s effort now to potentially interfere with witnesses whose testimony is needed before our committee.”
Pelosi said Democrats “place ourselves in a time of urgency” and observed that the country’s founders never thought they would have a president “kick those guardrails” of checks and balances provided by the Constitution.
She noted that “we have to give the president the chance to exonerate himself,” but so far, he’s described his actions as “perfect.”
11:20 a.m.: Trump accuses Democrats of trying to hurt the country
Trump asserted Wednesday that the stock market was going down because of the impeachment inquiry and accused House Democrats of trying to deliberately hurt the county.
He latest tweet came as Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) held a news conference on Capitol Hill.
“All of this impeachment nonsense, which is going nowhere, is driving the Stock Market, and your 401K’s, down,” Trump tweeted. “But that is exactly what the Democrats want to do. They are willing to hurt the Country, with only the 2020 Election in mind!”
10:35 a.m.: Trump attacks Democrats ahead of Pelosi news conference
Trump went on Twitter to attack House Democrats shortly before Pelosi was scheduled to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).
In a pair of tweets, Trump renewed his call for Schiff to resign and attacked Democrats more broadly as “Do Nothing Democrats.”
At a hearing last week, Schiff presented an embellished version of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. He later said it was meant as a parody and said that should have been apparent to Trump.
“Congressman Adam Schiff should resign for the Crime of, after reading a transcript of my conversation with the President of Ukraine (it was perfect), fraudulently fabricating a statement of the President of the United States and reading it to Congress, as though mine! He is sick!” Trump tweeted.
He also shared a quote from Jeanne Zaino, a political science professor at Iona College in New York state, who had appeared as a guest on Fox News.
“Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats haven’t met the standards of impeachment. They have to be very careful here,” read the quote.
10:30 a.m.: House Democrats to subpoena White House for documents in its impeachment inquiry focused on Ukraine
In a memo issued Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said that the White House’s “flagrant disregard of multiple voluntary requests for documents — combined with stark and urgent warnings from the Inspector General about the gravity of these allegations — have left us with no choice but to issue this subpoena.”
The subpoena will be issued Friday, according to Cummings’s memo.
The memo said the subpoena will seek documents that the committee first requested on Sept. 9.
9:30 a.m.: Eric Trump cites Republican fundraising as he taunts Democrats
The president’s son Eric Trump went on Twitter on Wednesday morning to taunt Democrats for their impeachment inquiry.
In a tweet, he attached an Associated Press news story about Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee having raised a record $125 million in the third quarter of the year.
“This is what happens when you manufacture nonsense… the American people see right through it. Keep it up @SpeakerPelosi,” Eric Trump wrote.
9:15 a.m.: State Department’s inspector general headed to Capitol Hill for afternoon meeting
Steve Linick, the State Department’s inspector general, plans to meet with staffers of key House and Senate committees Wednesday at 3 p.m. at his request.
The committees were notified Tuesday that Linick wants “to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine,” according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.
The offer by Linick’s office, which operates mostly independently from the State Department and is responsible for investigating abuse and mismanagement, comes amid a standoff between Pompeo and House Democrats, who are demanding documents and testimony on Ukraine-related matters for their impeachment inquiry.
Linick’s office “obtained the documents from the acting legal adviser of the Department of State,” the letter said. The inspector general doesn’t have to seek Pompeo’s approval to approach Congress with information, especially if it is not classified.
It is unclear exactly what Linick will provide the committees, which include the panels in charge of foreign relations, intelligence, appropriations and oversight in the House and Senate. But the demand for any credible information related to Ukraine and the State Department is at a fever pitch as Democrats seek to build the case for Trump’s ouster based on his dealings with Ukraine’s leadership.
— Karoun Demirjian and John Hudson
9 a.m.: Trump focuses on other issues in first tweets of the day
Unlike previous days, impeachment did not dominate Trump’s early activity on Twitter on Wednesday.
He instead turned to other topics, including his promised border wall and a federal judge’s order to block a California law that would require Trump to release his tax returns for access to the state’s primary election ballot.
“I won the right to be a presidential candidate in California, in a major Court decision handed down yesterday,” Trump wrote. “It was filed against me by the Radical Left Governor of that State to tremendous Media hoopla. The VICTORY, however, was barely covered by the Fake News. No surprise!”
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the state would appeal the ruling.
In early tweets, Trump also urged Louisiana voters to pick a Republican candidate in the state’s gubernatorial primary on Oct. 12. Candidates from both parties compete in the state’s “jungle primary.”
8:15 a.m.: Former staff members say it’s unusual for a secretary of state to listen in on a call with leader of small nation
Former staff members who worked on foreign leader calls said it is very unusual for a secretary of state to listen in on calls with leaders from a country as small as Ukraine.
Partly it is because the secretary of state’s schedule is very busy and rarely aligns with the president’s schedule of routine calls to heads of state, so they arrange only to be on major foreign leader conversations.
When Rex Tillerson was secretary of state, for example, he would coordinate plans to listen in on Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The former staffers on the National Security Council said Pompeo’s presence on this call suggests the subject or the purpose of the call had high importance to the president, and thus to him. The former staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more candidly.
— Carol D. Leonnig
7:15 a.m.: Pompeo confirms he was on Trump’s July call with Zelensky
Pompeo acknowledged publicly for the first time Wednesday that he was on the July call between Trump and the leader of Ukraine.
Asked about the episode during a news conference in Rome, Pompeo said, “I was on the phone call.”
In response to a multipart question, he did not say whether he was comfortable with Trump’s pressing of Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter.
Pompeo said the call focused on issues such as the threat that Russia poses to Ukraine and the need for Ukraine to root out corruption.
He said the United States would consider to pursue those issues “even while all this noise is going on.”
During a Sept. 22 appearance on ABC News’s “This Week,” Pompeo was asked what he knew about Trump’s conversation with Zelensky following an initial Wall Street Journal report that the call was part of a whistleblower complaint.
Pompeo responded by saying he hadn’t seen the whistleblower report. He later said he had seen a statement from the Ukrainian foreign minister that there was no pressure applied on Zelensky. Pompeo made no mention of being on the call.
During his news conference Wednesday, Pompeo also repeated his claims from a letter on Tuesday that House Democratic staffers have been seeking to intimidate State Department officials in their efforts to learn more about Trump’s call with Zelensky.
“We won’t tolerate folks on Capitol Hill bullying, intimidating State Department employees. That’s unacceptable, and it’s not something that I’m going to permit to happen.” Pompeo said.
6:30 a.m.: Country to hear directly from Trump, Pelosi on Wednesday
The country will hear directly from the two leading figures in the impeachment drama — Trump and Pelosi — at separately scheduled news conferences on Wednesday.
Pelosi plans to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill at 10:45 a.m. She will be accompanied by Schiff, who has become the public face for Democrats in the impeachment inquiry.
Trump, meanwhile, has a 2 p.m. joint news conference scheduled with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, who is visiting the White House on Wednesday. Trump is certain to get questions from U.S. journalists about the impeachment drive.
6:15 a.m.: Critics blast Trump for calling his impeachment inquiry a ‘COUP’
Trump claimed he was a victim of a coup d’etat on Tuesday night, continuing his dramatic rhetoric that has drawn fierce pushback from legal scholars and Democrats since the House impeachment inquiry began last week.
“As I learn more and more each day,” he wrote on Twitter, “I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of the United States of America!”
Critics disputed the president’s tweet by pointing to basic definitions of a coup d’etat, a violent illegal overthrow of the government by an opposing group, and impeachment, a legal process laid out in the Constitution. Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), a presidential hopeful, even suggested Trump should not be allowed to make such a remark on Twitter, sharing his “COUP” tweet with CEO Jack Dorsey.
6 a.m.: Giuliani suggests suing Democrats over Ukraine probe
On Tuesday night, Rudolph W. Giuliani proposed an unusual legal strategy in response to the ongoing investigation into President Trump’s dealings in Ukraine: suing Democratic members of Congress.
Speaking on the Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle,” Trump’s personal attorney said that he “had a couple of talks” with attorneys amid the accelerating impeachment probe and a House subpoena for his own personal records concerning Ukraine. Their recommendation, Giuliani said, was “that we should bring a lawsuit on behalf of the president and several people in the administration, maybe even myself as a lawyer, against the members of Congress individually for violating constitutional rights, violating civil rights.”
Host Laura Ingraham noted that Giuliani’s suggestion was “novel,” and that congressional immunity prevents House members from being sued for anything they say on the floor. But outside those parameters, Giuliani argued, they could be held liable for forming a “conspiracy” to deprive the president of his constitutional rights.
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