Section: TPM (USA)
Team Trump Trips Over GOP Questions About Facts Of The Ukraine Gambit
Through eight hours of senator questions Wednesday, President Trump’s legal team stumbled the most when facing questions about the underlying facts of the case against the President — including questions posed by GOP senators. Twice, Trump’s lawyers struggled to distinguish how the President’s obsession with investigating Joe...
Report: John Roberts Stops Rand Paul From Revealing Whistleblower’s Identity
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has blocked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) from using questions at President Trump’s impeachment trial to reveal the name of a person thought to be the Ukraine whistleblower, Politico reports. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reportedly composed questions which would expose the tipster’s identity. But Roberts, who...
Murkowski And Collins Draw Blood In Pointed Question On Trump’s Political Motives
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) pitched President Donald Trump’s lawyers a curve ball Wednesday, asking a question that underscored the political motive behind Trump’s sudden interest in Ukrainian corruption. The senators asked if Trump ever mentioned the Bidens in connection to corruption in Ukraine before the...
At Long Last, Trump Defense Team Bearhugs Rudy’s Dirt-Digging Campaign
The campaign to dig up dirt in Ukraine on Trump’s political opponents began earlier than some senators had suggested, a lawyer for Trump said on Wednesday, bear-hugging Rudy Giuliani in what appears to be the deepest defense Trump’s team has offered of the President’s outside lawyer’s conduct. Trump lawyer Patrick Philbin...
Let’s Unpack This Weak Dershowitz Idiocy
The argument given a few moments ago about quid pro quos from Alan Dershowitz was so disingenuous and willfully bamboozling I think it’s important to briefly unpack it. Dershowitz argued that with many foreign policy decisions a President is both advancing the national interest and also looking to his personal political fortunes. That...
NBC: Trump Fan Tied To Yovanovitch Surveillance Scheme Pretended To Be DEA Officer
Anthony de Caluwe, a Dutch Trump fan with ties to indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, pretended to be an officer for the Drug Enforcement Administration while purportedly tracking former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, NBC News reported Wednesday. Several people told NBC News that de Caluwe, who provided the updates of...
House Foreign Policy Chair Says Bolton Told Him To Look Into Yovanovitch Ouster
In September, former National Security Adviser John Bolton told the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to look into the recall of former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, the chairman, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), said Wednesday. Yovanovitch was ultimately recalled last spring after a months-long smear campaign led by...
What the New Bolton-Engel Breaking News Really Means, And Why It Matters
We’ve just had breaking news in an announcement from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel. He says that on September 23rd, he spoke to John Bolton and Bolton “suggest[ed] to me – unprompted – that the committee look into the recall of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.” This was just as the original Ukraine story was breaking and...
Shokin Demands Criminal Probe Of Joe Biden In Declaration To Kyiv Prosecutors
Discredited Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin demanded in a Tuesday affidavit that Kyiv prosecutors open a criminal investigation into Joe Biden. Shokin repeated long-debunked allegations in the declaration, accusing Biden of “blackmail” and violating international law in pushing for Shokin to be fired in 2016. The filing marks the...
Giuliani Calls Bolton A ‘Backstabber,’ Denies Adviser Told Him To Stop Ukraine Scheme
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani attacked former National Security Adviser John Bolton on Wednesday, claiming Bolton had sold him down the river with regards to Giuliani’s Ukraine scheme. “He never said to me, ‘I’ve got a problem with what you are doing in Ukraine,’” Giuliani told CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge during a...
