Trump impeachment news: Watergate prosecutor says evidence to remove president at 'tipping point', as John Bolton posts cryptic attack on White House
Trump says he 'wants a trial' in relation to impeachment proceedings against him
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Donald Trump gave a wild, 53-minute long interview with Fox and Friends on Friday morning, attacking the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry and spreading debunked conspiracy theories.
A group of Senate Republicans met Thursday with White House officials to discuss how a potential trial on articles of impeachment of Mr Trump could happen. “Frankly, I want a trial,” the president said during the interview.
The president also used it as an opportunity to complain that ex-Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch never hung his portrait in the US embassy in Kiev.
Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman has meanwhile told Newsweek that Gordon Sondland‘s explosive appearance on Wednesday represented a “tipping point” that will bring about the demise of the Trump presidency.
The comments came as the first daughter, Ivanka Trump, was ridiculed online for attempting to defend her father with a quote from 19th century diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville. The quote she shared said: “A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.”
As The Week noted, Tocqueville never said this, a judge named John Innes Clark did. Worse still for Ms. Trump, the quote was part of a larger passage explicitly defending the practice of impeaching the president for wrongdoing; Clark called impeachment, with its risk of partisan misuse, “justly though preferable” to leaving the president immune from consequence between elections.
Meanwhile, former National Security Adviser John Bolton made a dramatic return to Twitter following his unexplained hiatus since his resignation in September. Mr Bolton said the White House had blocked access to his account, suggesting the administration is fearful of what he might say. On Friday afternoon he tweeted: “To those who speculated I went into hiding, I’m sorry to disappoint!”
Mr Trump was asked whether he was involved in blocking Mr Bolton’s Twitter account. He replied: “No, of course not, I had a good relationship with John.”
Catch-up on events as they happened
President denies plotting to replace Mike Pence with Nikki Haley
Trump moves on to praising his cabinet and denying that he plans to replace his vice president with ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley: "Nikki would be great but Mike Pence has done a phenomenal job as vice president."
He's now explaining why he went to the Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland last Saturday and denying rumours that he had "a massive heart attack".
And that's that! Phew...
Jewish groups call for Stephen Miller's resignation
A number of Jewish rights groups have joined the growing calls for Trump's senior adviser and anti-immigration zealot Stephen Miller to resign over a Southern Poverty Law Centre report into his email exchanges with Breitbart in 2015 and 2016, in which he encouraged the site to carry white nationalist stories.
Trump's Sharpie notes ridiculed in deluge of punk parody songs
That close-up on Trump's handwritten notes from Wednesday as he attempted to refute Sondland outside the White House was always going to inspire memes.
This time, they've taken the shape of punk and post-punk song parodies in the style of The Ramones and The Smiths.
Here's Darren Richman for Indy100.
'I do want, always, corruption'
Here are a few highlights from Trump's marathon 57 minute phone-in just now...
...and here's Chris Riotta with a memorable gaffe.
Barack Obama urges Democrats to 'chill out' over 2020 candidates
Former president Barack Obama has urged Democrats to "chill out" about the party’s 2020 field and to avoid putting candidates through "purity tests", warning that average voters are "nervous about changes that might take away what little they have".
Speaking to party donors a day after the latest Democratic primary debate, Obama added to a series of recent remarks about American politics and the presidential race, including his warning last Friday that the candidates not move too far to the left in their policy proposals and his observation that the average American does not want to "tear down the system".
Trump businesses 'earned $2,000 a day from Secret Service in first five months of presidency'
The Secret Service paid more than a quarter of a million dollars to Trump’s businesses in the first five months of his presidency alone, newly released documents show.
Yikes. Vittoria Elliott has more.
'Fiona Hill showed Republicans what they really stood for today - and it wasn't pretty'
For Indy Voices, Ahmed Baba has this reflection on Dr Hill's superb performance before Congress yesterday and how she put Trump's GOP apologists to shame.
John Bolton returns to Twitter and teases score settling
As alluded to earlier, Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton has made a sudden return to Twitter today and appears to be threatening to speak his mind...
He is one of a group of integral members of the president's inner circle who were mentioned frequently in the impeachment testimony this week but were conspicuous by their absence from the Longworth Office Building.
Mike Pence. Mike Pompeo. Rick Perry. Mick Mulvaney. Rudy Giuliani. Nothing.
Often mentioned through five days and a dozen witnesses but absent from the room, they sit at the centre of a remarkably consistent story told by others of Trump's pressure campaign on Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. All the while, military aid to the US ally was withheld as Trump trafficked in a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election.
Fiona Hill, the no-nonsense Russia scholar, had some pointed advice for the absentees, who refused to cooperate under orders from the White House. "I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and a moral obligation to provide it," Hill told the House Intelligence Committee in the capstone hearing to a week of testimony.
It wasn't clear which of the missing witnesses Hill was referencing or whether Adam Schiff intended to seek more testimony as Democrats drive to vote on impeachment by year's end. But in her crisp accent and straightforward style, Hill made clear that Bolton, her former boss, is one such person with relevant information to the investigation - and there are likely many others.
"Everyone was in the loop," European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland testified on Wednesday. Bolton, though, was vexed by Trump's Ukraine plans.
Hill said that when she complained to Bolton that then-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was being "smeared," Bolton "looked pained, basically indicated with body language that there was nothing which we could do about it," Hill said Thursday. Then, Bolton "said that Rudy Giuliani was a hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up."
At another point over the summer, Hill testified, a meeting at the White House with Ukrainian officials was cut short when Sondland said he had an agreement with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney that Ukraine's president would get a meeting with Trump if Ukraine agreed to launch investigations.
According to Hill, Bolton "stiffened" and ended the meeting, later telling Hill to report it to NSC lawyers. "I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this," Hill said Bolton told her.
Bolton's name was mentioned more than 50 times during Thursday's hearing alone, according to the transcript.
Supreme Court must release Trump's financial records, urge prosecutors
The House Oversight Committee and Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance have both urged the US Supreme Court to clear the way for the disclosure of Trump’s financial records in a pair of filings made on Thursday.
Lindsey Graham runs away from veteran seeking to question him about Trump's conduct
South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who has surrendered an awful lot credibility since hitching his wagon to Team Trump in his quest to remain "relevant", is seen here in a video doing the rounds today running away from a Marine seeking to question about the president in perfectly civil fashion.
That clip deserves to be seen alongside this one from the archives. How far this man has fallen simply beggars belief.
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