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Führer Trump’s Impeachment Inquiry Thread. Update: The Senate completes the coverup

Donald Trump | Mediaite

Donald J. Trump was the 45th President of the United States. Prior to becoming a politician, Trump was an American businessman and a television personality. He was born on June 14th, 1946. He is married to Melania Trump and has five children.
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CAUGHT: GOP Rep. Reportedly Faked Phone Call to Duck Questions About Trump Attacking Yovanovitch


While rounding up GOP reactions to President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking Marie Yovanovitch, Politico reported that Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) faked a phone call to avoid talking about it.

The report noted a number of GOP representatives verbally dodged questions on Trump attacking Yovanovitch while she was testifying to Congress, but Ratcliffe and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) literally dodged questions.

“Several Republicans on the Intelligence Committee dodged the topic entirely. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) refused to answer questions about the tweets as he ducked on to the House floor, while Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) quickly whipped out his cell phone and began talking into it, even though his home screen was visible and there was no call in progress.”
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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member of the committee interviewing Yovanovitch also dodged the question, saying “I don’t discuss committee business.”

Fellow committee member Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) said “I’m not a lawyer, I’m not familiar with it, but it’s just not something I would do. It’s just not my style” when asked if Trump’s tweets amounted to witness intimidation.

Trump himself later argued he considered his attack on Yovanovitch “freedom of speech.”

“I just want to have a total–I want freedom of speech. That is a political process. The Republicans have been treated very badly,” Trump told reporters.
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WH Blames NSC Impeachment Witness For Discrepancies In Call Summaries

When the White House on Friday released a memorandum of the first conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukraine's president-elect, something popped out to eagle-eyed observers: The…
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WH Blames NSC Impeachment Witness For Discrepancies In Call Summaries

When the White House on Friday released a memorandum of the first conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president-elect, something popped out to eagle-eyed observers: The conversation was much different than the readout the White House issued at the time.



By Friday afternoon, the administration had managed to blame the discrepancies on a key impeachment probe witness, National Security Council official Alexander Vindman.

In April, when it released its readout of the call between the two leaders, the White House said Trump and then-Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky discussed heady diplomatic affairs — such as “the peaceful and democratic manner of the electoral process,” “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and the effort to “root out corruption” in Ukraine.

In contrast, the newly released memorandum of the call, which includes purported dialogue between the two men, doesn’t include any of that. Rather, it’s largely surface-level and even superficial.

“When I owned Miss Universe, [Ukraine] always had great people,” Trump told Zelensky over the phone. “Ukraine was always very well represented.”

What accounted for the difference? On Friday, a White House spokesperson blamed Vindman, the director for European affairs for the president’s National Security Council and a key witness in the ongoing impeachment probe.

“It is standard operating procedure for the National Security Council to provide readouts of the President’s phone calls with foreign leaders,” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement.

“This one was prepared by the NSC’s Ukraine expert,” he said.

Blaming Vindman for the discrepancy between the paragraph-length summary and the three-page memorandum of the call is an interesting choice. That’s because Vindman has testified that the memorandum of the second, much more damning call between Trump and Zelensky did not actually reflect the full conversation. Vindman listened in to both calls as part of his NSC duties.

That July memorandum, unlike the memo of the leaders’ April discussion, is pock-marked with ellipses, and Vindman testified that it actually put words in the Ukrainian president’s mouth that Zelensky didn’t say.

Specifically, Vindman testified, Zelensky referred to the actual name of the natural gas company on whose board Hunter Biden sat, and into which Trump had asked Zelensky to open an investigation: “Burisma.”

But the call memorandum says Zelensky instead referred to Burisma as “the company that you mentioned in this issue.”

Another notable difference between the two calls is that there was no paragraph-long summary released for the second one. America’s own acting ambassador to Ukraine only found out about the call’s contents second-hand, when another NSC official told him that it “could have been better.”
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House GOPers React To Trump Tweets

Just minutes after Yovanovitch’s public testimony wrapped up, a number of House Republicans defended President Trump’s tweets attacking Yovanovitch.
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House Republicans Give Trump Cover On Tweets Attacking Yovanovitch

Just minutes after ousted Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s public testimony wrapped up, a number House Republicans defended President Trump’s Friday morning tweets attacking the career diplomat.

As Yovanovitch’s testimony was underway Friday morning, Trump tweetedthat “everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad” and that it is a President’s “absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

During a press conference Friday following the conclusion of Yovanovitch’s testimony, House Republicans defended the President’s tweets that swiftly garnered backlash and accusations of witness tampering.

When asked by a reporter on whether it was appropriate for Trump to attack a witness amid their testimony, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) argued that’s not what happened.

“I don’t know that it was an attack on the witness. It was really characterization of her resume, and when you look at this, when you look at this, you guys want him to go in with no attorneys, no witnesses, no Twitter or no anything,” Meadows said. “At some point you’ve got to say, when is it going to be a fair process? Today was not a fair process in there.”

After a reporter asked whether it was a fair process for Yovanovitch, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) argued that House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) failed to point out the second sentence of Trump’s tweet — which referred to the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Zelensky “spoke unfavorably about her” — to Yovanovitch when he questioned her.

“I think it would’ve been more responsible if Adam Schiff wants to ask that question to let Ambassador Yovanovitch read the entire tweet to digest it and then respond,” Zeldin said. “By the way, if you want to talk about what President Trump said to President Zelensky about Ambassador Yovanovitch? Why would he cherry pick out once again, he loves to withhold key facts. That’s how he rolls.”

However, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said that she “disagrees with the tone of the tweet,” before saying that she “happens to disagree with the tweet” and that Democrats want to wage a “political food fight.”

“I said I disagree with the tone of the tweet. Again, when we are talking about impeachment, we are talking about impeachable offenses. You can disagree or agree with the tweet — I happen to disagree with the tweet. But again, as we know, the Democrats want to continue making this a political food fight. They are going about it in a partisan way.”

Earlier Friday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) backed Trump on his tweets by arguing that “the President has been frustrated with this relentless attack on him by the Democrats” and that he did not commit witness tampering with his tweets, according to CNN.
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Advisers React To Trump Attacking Yovanovitch

Trump did not get approval for his Friday tweets targeting Yovanovitch with top White House aides prior to posting them.
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Trump’s Advisers Privately Admit His Tweets Attacking Yovanovitch Did Damage


President Trump’s advisers and allies didn’t get the heads up before he launched attacks against ousted Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Friday morning while her public testimony in the House impeachment probe was underway.

Only an hour into Yovanovitch’s testimony, Trump tweeted that “everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad” and that it is a President’s “absolute right to appoint ambassadors.” His attacks were swiftly met with backlash, which included accusations of witness tampering and noted how he didn’t react to the public testimony of acting ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and top State Department official George Kent the same way.

According to a Saturday morning report in the New York Times, Trump’s tweets raised new doubts among the President’s advisers and allies, given the upcoming public testimonies next week of eight witnesses over the course of three days.

The Times reported that Trump did not get approval for his Friday tweets targeting Yovanovitch with top White House aides prior to posting them. Privately, Trump’s advisers admitted that his tweets had done damage.

Given how Trump’s congressional allies had largely held back from directly attacking career diplomat Bill Taylor and top State Department official George Kent during their public testimonies, the Times reported that they had planned to be especially careful with Yovanovitch’s testimony.

According to one person close to the House Republican leadership who spoke to the Times, during a Thursday practice session in the Capitol aimed at coordinating their overall message, Trump’s congressional allies planned to use the same care in questioning Yovanovitch that Republican senators tried to employ during the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford last year, when she testified that Justice Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her when the they were in high school.

Trump clearly wasn’t on the same page, which spurred House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff Democrats to read the President’s attacks aloud during Yovanovitch’s testimony.
“Now the President, in real time, is attacking you,” Schiff told Yovanovitch. “What effect do you think that has on other witnesses willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing?”

Yovanovitch responded that she found Trump’s real-time attack to be “very intimidating.”
According to a pool report Friday, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham defended Trump’s tweets by arguing that they were “simply the President’s opinion.”

Later Friday, according to CNN, Trump argued that he has “the right to speak,” regarding his tweets about Yovanovitch, and admitted to watching Yovanovitch’s public testimony which he characterized it as “a joke.” Grisham initially claimed that the President would not watch the hearing after taking in Intel Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) conspiracy theory-laden opening statement.

During a press conference Friday following the conclusion of Yovanovitch’s testimony, House Republicans gave Trump cover on his tweets that swiftly garnered backlash.
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