Trump does it again
President Donald Trump yesterday again invited foreign interference in a US presidential election, calling on Ukraine and China to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden - similar to a request that has already triggered an impeachment inquiry in Congress.
As he left the White House for a visit to Florida, Trump told reporters he believed Beijing should investigate Biden and his businessman son Hunter Biden.
“And by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens. Because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump said.
Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have accused former vice president Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination to run against Republican Trump in the 2020 election, of improperly assisting his son’s business ventures in Ukraine and China, but have offered no evidence.
Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call in July to investigate Biden and his son over allegations of corruption. Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
The revelation of the request by a whistleblower prompted House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to announce a formal impeachment investigation against Trump last week.
Trump froze $400 million in US aid to Ukraine shortly before he asked its president for the favor, prompting accusations from Democrats that he had misused US foreign policy for personal gain.
The impeachment probe has angered Trump, whose volatile presidency survived a two-year federal probe that found Russia had intervened to help him win the White House in 2016.
On Wednesday, Trump unleashed furious attacks on the impeachment inquiry after Democrats said they were ‘not fooling around’ with the inquiry.
Democrats should be “focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016,” Trump tweeted.
Adam Schiff, the impeachment probe’s Democratic point man in the House of Representatives, told reporters there is a “real sense of urgency” to press forward.
Trump has fought back in terms once inconceivable for a president, including his claim late Tuesday that this is “not an impeachment, it is a COUP.”
Trump assailed Schiff, declaring the House Intelligence Committee chairman “a low life” who should be arrested for “treason.”
But at the same time Trump acknowledged he may yet cooperate with the latest move by Democrats, who threatened to subpoena the White House for documents related to the president’s efforts to get Ukraine to probe a political rival.
“We’ll work together with ‘shifty’ Schiff and Pelosi and all of them and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
Trump insists he did nothing wrong in a July phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and on Wednesday got support from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who said he saw “nothing compromising” in the conversation.
Given Trump’s controversial history with Putin, it was unlikely that the Kremlin leader’s backing would do much to calm waters in Washington.
‘NOT FOOLING AROUND’
A whistleblower, so far only identified as someone from the intelligence services, went to authorities with concerns about the Ukraine call, triggering the impeachment inquiry.
Trump has likened the whistleblower to a spy and called for his or her identity to be made public, although by law whistleblowers are protected.
Schiff on Wednesday called Trump’s comments about the whistleblower a “blatant effort to intimidate witnesses.”
He also warned Trump and the White House to treat the pending subpoena with the utmost gravity.
“We’re not fooling around here,” Schiff said, adding that efforts to stonewall the collection of related data would be considered “evidence of obstruction of justice.”
Meanwhile, the State Department’s independent watchdog met with a bipartisan group of staffers from House and Senate committees to discuss new wrinkles in the scandal.
Inspector General Steve Linick showed staff, and some lawmakers who attended, documents sent mysteriously to State that included a rehash of conspiracy theories that appeared aimed at discrediting Trump’s opponents.
“The briefing and documents raise troubling questions about apparent efforts inside and outside the Trump administration to target specific officials, including former vice president Joe Biden’s son and then-US ambassador to Ukraine Masha Yovanovitch,” the chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees said in a joint statement.
The State Department is closely caught up in the probe, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirming that he listened in during the Zelensky call.
Pompeo and Giuliani have been subpoenaed to provide documents. Five diplomats have so far been summoned to testify.
Comments