This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/23/trump-ukraine-president-biden-impeachment-pressure-builds

The article has changed 10 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 3 Version 4
Impeachment talk intensifies over Trump's call with Ukraine president Trump shrugs off impeachment talk over call with Ukraine president
(about 4 hours later)
Impeachment talk has intensified in Washington, after Donald Trump suggested he discussed Joe Biden and Biden’s son in a phone call with the new president of Ukraine. Donald Trump has attempted to shrug off renewed demands for his impeachment over the allegation he tried to pressure a foreign government to hurt his leading rival in next year’s presidential election.
Trump goes on offensive over Biden and Ukraine as Schiff ponders impeachment Democrats ramp up pressure on Trump over Ukraine whistleblower scandal – live
One Democratic member of the House intelligence committee said Trump’s remarks “really upped the ante”. Trump travelled to the United Nations in New York under the shadow of reports that he asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2020, and that a US intelligence community whistleblower filed a report about it.
Leaving the White House on Sunday for Texas, Ohio and then New York and the United Nations, Trump told reporters the call, on 25 July, with Volodymyr Zelenskiy was both “congratulatory” and focused on corruption in the eastern European nation. Some Democrats said the allegation was a tipping point in the dilemma over whether to begin impeachment proceedings. Asked on Monday if he took that threat seriously, the president replied: “Not at all seriously.”
Trump said he raised Biden as an example. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Analysts have cast the episode as the latest example of Trump’s willingness to behave with impunity, sow disinformation and confusion and stretch democratic norms to breaking point.
Regardless, Trump said: “It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice-President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.” It emerged last week that the whistleblower filed a report after becoming alarmed at Trump’s alleged attempt to pressure Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president – eight times, according to the Wall Street Journal – in a phone call in July.
Trump’s apparent admission added to pressure on Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings. Even some Republicans urged the president to make public the details of his call with Zelenskiy. Trump hinted at such a move. Some reports suggest Trump tried to strong-arm Zelenskiy into targeting Biden by temporarily withholding US military aid.
The details of the call are the subject of an intelligence community whistleblower complaint about the president’s behaviour. Against legal precedent, the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share details with lawmakers, citing presidential privilege. The president has confirmed that he discussed corruption during the call and mentioned Biden but denies applying pressure on Zelenskiy.
In what is swiftly becoming one of the most challenging moments of Trump’s presidency, Maguire is due to testify before the House intelligence committee on Thursday. “We had a perfect phone call,” he told reporters at the UN. “Everybody knows it’s just a Democrat witch-hunt.”
It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let himIt is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him
On Sunday, the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who has resisted calls for impeachment over Trump’s links with Russia, said administration officials “will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation”, if Maguire refuses to provide information to Congress. The White House is refusing to release the substance of the whistleblower’s complaint, setting up a showdown with Congress.
Pelosi’s statement, made in a letter to Democratic lawmakers, came after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term congresswoman from New York who has emerged as a progressive leader, criticized her party’s unwillingness to pursue impeachment. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, called on the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to investigate. Schumer wrote in a letter that the Republicans’ “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude toward the president “is unacceptable and must change”.
Schumer also said Republicans should urge the White House to release transcripts of Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy and identify who in the White House sought to delay $250m in aid to Ukraine.
Trump’s claims, echoed by rightwing media, concern the activities of Biden’s son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. As vice-president, Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor general, seen by many as too soft on corruption. Trump has asserted without basis that the prosecutor, who had led an investigation into the company’s owner, “was after” Hunter Biden.
The president said on Monday: “What Biden did was wrong. We’re supporting a country, so we want to make sure that country is honest. One of the reasons the new president got elected is he was going to stop corruption. So it’s very important that on occasion that you speak to somebody about corruption.”
He also added what appeared to be an admission that US military aid was at issue: “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son. The former vice-president has dismissed the claim as a political smear. He tweeted on Sunday: “Let’s be clear, Donald Trump pressured a foreign government to interfere in our elections. It goes against everything the United States stands for. We must make him a one-term president.”
Trump has spent much of his first term denouncing allegations he benefited from Russian interference in his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. The special counsel Robert Mueller showed multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow but did not find direct collusion.
The drumbeat for Trump’s impeachment has become distinctly louder. A majority of Democrats in the House were already in favour but Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, has resisted, perhaps fearing such a move would be unpopular and rally Trump’s support.
On Sunday, Pelosi said administration officials “will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation”, if the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, refuses to provide information to Congress.
It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the US code is death. That’s the only penalty
Pelosi’s statement, made in a letter to Democratic lawmakers, came after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term congresswoman from New York who has emerged as a progressive leader, criticised her party’s unwillingness to pursue impeachment.
“At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior – it is the Democratic party’s refusal to impeach him for it,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet on Saturday night.“At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior – it is the Democratic party’s refusal to impeach him for it,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet on Saturday night.
“It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him. The integrity of our democracy isn’t threatened when a president breaks the law. It‘s threatened when we do nothing about it. The GOP’s silence [and] refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.” “It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him… The GOP’s silence [and] refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.”
Adam Schiff, the chairman of the committee that will oversee Thursday’s hearing, said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union: “We may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.” Another sign of building momentum came from the chair of the House intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, who told CNN “we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.”
On Monday Jim Himes of Connecticut, a member of the House panel, told CNN: “Extorting a foreign leader for the purposes of getting that leader to do your political work, to try to find dirt on your opponent, is extortion. It is using the assets of the United States of America and the public trust for your own corrupt … ends, certainly political ends. On Monday Jim Himes of Connecticut, a member of the House panel, told CNN: “I can’t tell you that the House will move into impeachment mode right away, but this really ups the ante.”
“I can’t tell you that the House will move into impeachment mode right away, but this really ups the ante.” Why is the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower scandal so serious?
Of Pelosi’s letter, Himes said: “It’s sort of hard not to read between the lines there about what she means.” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted: “There is an implicit threat in every demand that a president makes of another country, especially one so dependent on us as Ukraine. Who cares whether Trump explicitly made the interference-for-aid connection? The corruption is in the demand.”
At the weekend, Biden, among the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused Trump of making a baseless political smear, in an “overwhelming abuse of power”. There were few signs of Republicans breaking ranks. If Democrats do go ahead with impeachment, there is virtually no prospect of the Republican-controlled Senate convicting and removing the president before the 2020 election.
I’m hoping the president can share, in an appropriate way, information to deal with the drama around the phone call Bill Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts who is mounting a long-shot challenge to Trump, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a US election. It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason.
The Republican Utah senator Mitt Romney, a longtime Trump critic, said it was “critical for the facts to come out”. “It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the US code is death. That’s the only penalty.”
“If the president asked or pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney [former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has admitted pressuring Ukraine], it would be troubling in the extreme. Critical for the facts to come out,” Romney said. Trump and Zelenskiy plan to meet on the sidelines of the UN on Wednesday. Maguire is due to testify before the House intelligence committee on Thursday.
Even the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a fierce defender of Trump, said he was “hoping the president can share, in an appropriate way, information to deal with the drama around the phone call. I think it would be good for the country if we could deal with it.”
The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told Fox News on Monday there can be “10 to 20 people” listening to such calls, and reiterated Trump’s position that leaders need to be able to speak candidly.
“And so I do think that perhaps releasing this kind of a transcript could set a bad precedent,” Grisham said. “He’s willing to do it, I think, but there’s a lot of other people, lawyers and the such, that may have a problem with it.”
Hunter Biden was hired by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings in April 2014, two months after Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president was ousted by protesters.
Joe Biden was heavily involved in US efforts to support the new pro-western government and its pledge to fight corruption. The hiring of the younger Biden raised concerns that the Ukrainian company was seeking to gain influence with the Obama administration.
Ukraine furore confirms Giuliani as Trump's most off-kilter advocate
Two years later, Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire its prosecutor general, who was accused by many of being soft on corruption.
Trump has claimed the prosecutor, who had led an investigation into Burisma’s owner, “was after” Hunter Biden and the vice-president was trying to protect his son. There is no evidence for this.
Trump has insisted he said “absolutely nothing wrong” in the call to Zelenskiy. The two leaders plan to meet at the UN general assembly in New York this week.
Trump called the intelligence community whistleblower “partisan” before acknowledging he did not know their identity.
The complaint was based on a series of events including the 25 July call between Trump and Zelenskiy, the Associated Press reported, citing intelligence officials.
Campaigning in Iowa on Saturday, Biden said “Trump deserves to be investigated” for “trying to intimidate a foreign leader, if that’s what happened”. Biden said Trump was motivated by politics, “because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum”.
Donald TrumpDonald Trump
UkraineUkraine
EuropeEurope
US politicsUS politics
Volodymyr ZelenskiyVolodymyr Zelenskiy
newsnews
Share on FacebookShare on Facebook
Share on TwitterShare on Twitter
Share via EmailShare via Email
Share on LinkedInShare on LinkedIn
Share on PinterestShare on Pinterest
Share on WhatsAppShare on WhatsApp
Share on MessengerShare on Messenger
Reuse this contentReuse this content