Donald Trump has demanded he be given the chance to meet with the anonymous whistleblower who sounded the alarm over his call with Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked the Ukrainian president to pursue a corruption investigation into Democratic 2020 front-runner Joe Biden.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser,” the president tweeted, as lawyers expressed concern for the safety of the informant and fellow Republicans attacked Mr Trump’s decision to quote a pastor warning Congress’s new impeachment inquiry could trigger “a Civil War like fracture”, with one congressman branding the rhetoric “beyond repugnant”.
Loyalists to the president like Rudy Giuliani, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and top aide Stephen Miller have nevertheless attacked the whistleblower’s complaint as “all hearsay” and their actions as those of a “saboteur”, risking further compromising the public servant.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Breaking: Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been issued a subpoena for documents relating to the House investigation into the president’s Ukraine scandal –
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Here’s my story on the latest Republican resignation/retirement under Donald Trump, this time coming from the first man in the House of Representatives to endorse the president for his 2016 election. Turns out Chris Collins is expected to plead guilty tomorrow afternoon to felony insider trading.
Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said he would not cooperate with House Democrat impeachment enquiries, before immediately contradicting himself when pressed.
Mr Giuliani was being interviewed on ABC News when he said that he would not cooperate with investigations in the House Intelligence Committee while representative Adam Schiff was in charge.
“I wouldn’t cooperate with Adam Schiff,” he said. “I think he should be removed. If they remove Adam Schiff and put a neutral person in, a Democrat who hasn’t expressed an opinion — if I had a judge in the case and announced he was going to impeach, wouldn’t I move to recuse that judge.”
A New York Republican has resigned from his seat the day before he was reportedly set to file a guilty plea over felony charges of insider trading, according to reports.
Christopher Collins, who has served in the US House of Representatives since 2013, was said to have resigned on Monday afternoon and sent his notice to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The 69-year-old politician has been accused of illegally trading on material non-public information, according to federal prosecutors. Reports indicated he was set to change his non-guilty plea during a court appearance later in the week.
Mr Collins was the first congressman to endorse Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016.
Story to come…
Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of Americans believe that Donald Trump pressuring the leader of Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 presidential rival is a serious issue, according to a new poll.
A total of 43 per cent of respondents to the ABC/Ipsos survey said the allegations were “very serious” while 21 per cent agreed the situation was at least “somewhat serious”.
Just 17 per cent said that they were surprised by the allegations against the US president, which were detailed in a whistleblower complaint and backed up by a transcript released by the White House itself.
It has emerged that days after ordering a freeze to some military assistance for Ukraine, on 25 July, the US president pressed his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer and US attorney general William Barr to investigate leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Donald Trump promised a presidency unlike any other and a decent argument to be made that he has offered just that – but he is now reaping the dubious rewards of his freewheeling nature.
Painting himself as being outside the Washington establishment, Trump’s administration was set up in that manner: unguarded and scattergun conversations with world leaders; infighting among White House factions that left leaks a distinct possibility; and a president that could change policy at the drop of a hat.
The Ukraine allegations – almost three years into Trump’s presidency and following at least one other major invention into his conduct, the Mueller inquiry – are a direct result of that early set-up, and a refusal to follow established White House norms.
The latest analysis from The Independent’s Chris Stevenson.
Another tweet from the president that may have gotten lost in the news cycle earlier this morning….here Donald Trump can be seen attacking the media and Joe Biden after continuing to ramp up his unfounded allegations against the former vice president –
Donald Trump has tweeted a video from the Welcome Ceremony for the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which the president attended earlier today:
Rising 2020 Democrat Elizabeth Warren is hitting out at Donald Trump over his hard-line immigration policies, calling his decision to cut the country’s acceptance of refugees “heartless and wrong” –
While impeachment polling has not typically shown immense support for removing the president from office, the latest figures could prove troubling for Donald Trump when compared to surveys surrounding Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 –
ICYMI: Donald Trump has raised the spectre of divisions akin to a civil war in the US in the event that he is impeached, in a series of incendiary posts on Twitter.
The president appeared to approvingly quote Robert Jeffress, a pastor and Fox News contributor, in a stream of late-night tweets. “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,” Mr Jeffress said, in words then quoted by Mr Trump.
The president tweeted and reposted several defences of his behaviour on Sunday night and lashed out at the Democratic Party. He also demanded to meet the whistleblower at the heart of a scandal that has triggered a formal impeachment inquiry in Congress, and warned of “big consequences” for those involved.
Joe Biden’s campaign has issued a scathing letter to the heads of major American news networks demanding they stop booking Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for interviews, saying he will “knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative”.
Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield, two top aides to the former vice president, argued in the letter that Mr Giuliani “is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.”
“We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump,” read the letter, which was reportedly sent to all major network heads including the presidents of NBC, CBS News, CNN and more. “While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough.”
Story to come…
Here’s a picture of Trump, Pence and defence secretary Mark Esper standing in the rain to brighten an otherwise dreary afternoon.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has reiterated that he would be forced to set up a trial of President Trump in the upper chamber of Congress should the House of Representatives vote to impeach him.
Hillary Clinton is clearly enjoying herself at the moment.
A couple of sharp takedowns of Trump’s latest efforts to discredit the whistleblower.
Pompeo’s State Department is (belatedly) going after Russia’s Internet Research Agency over its efforts to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favour.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has dismissed reports that the Trump administration was considering delisting Chinese companies from US stock exchanges as “fake news.”
Asked in particular about a Bloomberg report on the matter, Navarro said told CNBC: “That story, which appeared in Bloomberg: I’ve read it far more carefully than it was written,” Navarro told CNBC. “Over half of it was highly inaccurate or simply flat-out false.”
Trump’s administration is considering the move, three sources briefed on the matter said on Friday, in what would be a radical escalation of US-China trade tensions.
Bloomberg first reported last week that the administration was considering limits to US investors’ portfolios, including delisting the Chinese companies.
“It was really irresponsible journalism and the problem we have here… these bad stories push out the good,” Navarro added. “And what happens is as soon as Bloomberg puts it out there, there’s pressure from others to put it out there.
“This story was just so full of inaccuracies and in terms of the truth of the matter, what the Treasury said I think was accurate,” he said.
Reuters
Trump’s recently ousted national security adviser John Bolton is speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in DC and is offering some “unvarnsihed” home truths on his former employee’s attitude towards North Korea and Iran.
He really is trying everything isn’t he?
Over to you Joe. These were his most recent thoughts on the subject.
