Trump news: President's Ukraine call was part of 'illicit and corrupt scheme', released testimonies say
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Your support makes all the difference.Before public hearings begin in the impeachment investigation into Donald Trump, recently released transcripts of testimonies from two key witnesses offer a more complete picture of the president's dealings with Ukraine and the role of his attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Lt Col Alexander Vindman testified that "no doubt" the president was asking for investigations into his political rivals, and Fiona Hill warned that Mr Giuliani was peddling conspiracy theories to Mr Trump that could make US elections in 2020 vulnerable to Russian influence.
Mr Trump told reporters at the White House he is considering Vladimir Putin’s invitation to attend Moscow’s Victory Day parade and is planning to release a new transcript of an earlier call with Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in an attempt to clear his name with the House impeachment inquiry ongoing.
As the president’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney failed to show up for his deposition to the inquiry despite being issued with a subpoena late on Thursday, Democratic congressman Danny Heck has dismissed the significance of the White House’s refusal to co-operate, saying the panel has already amassed “a mountain of evidence” against the president.
Steve Bannon, Mr Trump's former White House chief strategist and a key figure in his campaign, testified in the trial of Roger Stone that Mr Stone was the campaign's "access point" for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
But Mr Bannon did not say whether the president had actually ever relied on Mr Stone to deliver information from the organisation. He believes Mr Stone knew about Hillary Clinton's campaign emails that WikiLeaks planned to release.
Mr Stone is on trial for witness tampering and lying to Congress about his role in the WikiLeaks scandal, which prosecutors argue Mr Stone had arranged to deliver information on Mr Trump's political rivals in order to protect the president.
Meanwhile, the latest excerpts from A Warning, the new book by an anonymous administration insider, has revealed Mr Trump’s senior staff once considered resigning en masse in response to the president’s behaviour, which the mystery author characterises as volatile and incompetent.
The president ended his week announcing plans to take his tax case to the Supreme Court, which will decide whether take up Mr Trump's attempt to block a subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney seeking his tax records.
Follow along as it happened in our liveblog.
President taking questions from reporters before departing for 'Black Voices for Trump' launch event in Georgia
Trump is being quizzed by the press en route to Marine One. He's declined to back Jeff Sessions' run for his old Alabama Senate seat and says he's not worried about the impeachment inquiry.
He has also said he plans to release a transcript of an earlier call with Zelensky and knocked Michael Bloomberg's probable late entry into the Democratic race, predicitng he will leach voters away from Joe Biden.
Here's Chris Riotta on Trump's vow to release a "second" Ukraine transcript (even though the first was just a memo rather than an exact record of what was said).
Trump considering attending Moscow Victory Day parade
The president has also told the White House press corps he is considering attending Russia's Victory Day parade next year and has again rubbished yesterday's Washington Post story about his asking Bill Barr to publicly declare his 25 July call legal.
Mulvaney fails to appear at impeachment inquiry
As expected, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has snubbed the impeachment inquiry, skipping his deposition as Democrats wrap up closed-door interviews and move into a public phase of the investigation.
Democrats subpoenaed Mulvaney late on Thursday as the White House signalled that he would not appear.
This was Trump on the rationale a little while ago.
Trump contradicts fellow Republicans on public phase of House impeachment hearings
During his Q&A just now, the president contradicted the likes of Republican congressmen Matt Gaetz, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan on the need for public hearings in the impeachment inquiry, after his cheerleaders spent weeks attacking the Democrats' "Soviet-style" behind-closed-door interviews and engaging in stunts to disrupt the process despite their fellow GOP members taking part.
For the record, here are some choice clips of him speaking earlier.
Right-wing pastor pushes conspiracy theory about anonymous White House author
Just to make a change from speculating wildly about the identity of the CIA whistleblower, the American right is now turning its attention to smoking out the anymous author of A Warning, which has provided us with any number of juicy West Wing titbits today.
Decidedly dodgy Florida pastor Rick Wiles thinks he has his man.
Rick Credico —a radio host, comedian, impressionist and star witness in the Roger Stone trial — is on his second day on the stand.
Things seem be going well.
Transcripts from the testimonies of Lt Col Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill will be released shortly, according to NBC News.
In his testimony, Lt Col Vindman confirmed that US officials had pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for a meeting with Donald Trump and military aid.
Days later, Mr Trump said "you'll be seeing very soon what comes out" about Mr Vindman, and his supporters and sycophants attacked the decorated Iraq War veteran and shared "deep state" conspiracies about his role in the impeachment hearings.
The New York Times also uncovered that Mr Vindman testified that he tried to correct the White House's amended transcript of Mr Trump's 25 July phone call with the Ukraine president. Missing in the transcript are recordings of Joe Biden discussing Ukraine corruption and an explicit mention of Burisma Holdings.
Here's a joint statement from the three House committee chairs:
"Lt. Col. Vindman and Dr. Hill—two courageous and patriotic Americans—testified despite pressure by the White House to silence their testimony. Their superiors in the White House have declined to cooperate with the inquiry, but transcripts released today show clearly that individuals close to the President were alarmed by a presidential scheme as illicit and corrupt as a ‘drug deal.'"
That "drug deal" line comes from Fiona Hill via John Bolton, who told her to "go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this, and you go and tell him what you’ve heard and what I’ve said."
Ms Hill said Bolton "made it clear that he believed that they were making, basically, an improper arrangement to have a meeting in the White House."
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