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

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Aides Advise Trump Not To Fire Mulvaney

As the impeachment inquiry enters its public phase, Trump aides have advised him to hold off on firing acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.
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Aides Advise Trump Not To Fire Mulvaney As Public Impeachment Hearings Begin


As the impeachment inquiry enters its public phase, aides to President Trump have advised him to hold off on firing his embattled acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

According to a Washington Post report Wednesday, three sources familiar with the discussions said that senior advisers have warned Trump that removing Mulvaney amid a high-stakes impeachment probe could lead to dire consequences, given how his acting chief of staff played a key role in the decision to hold up Ukrainian military aid and the disruption such a staff shakeup would cause.

Two sources told the Post that Trump never got over his anger from Mulvaney’s disastrous press conference last month, when he made the stunning Ukraine quid pro quo admission, despite how Mulvaney later issued a statement saying that “there was absolutely no quid pro quo.”

“I don’t think you’ll see him going anywhere until after December,” one Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Post. “But the President was very unhappy with that press conference. That was a very bad day for the president.”

The Post reported that Trump’s advisers specifically cited his fraught relationship with his former national security adviser John Bolton as an example. On Monday, the Post reported that Bolton allies were dismayed when they learned that Mulvaney was attempting to join a lawsuit filed by former Bolton deputy Charles Kupperman to gauge whether he has to comply with a House subpoena. Mulvaney ultimately bailed on the effort Tuesday.

The ongoing battle between Mulvaney and John Bolton was also the subject of a Tuesday report in the New York Times, which additionally mentioned how Mulvaney has privately told colleagues that he’s all but un-fireable because “he knows too much” about the President’s Ukraine pressure campaign to dig up false allegations against his political rivals.

Other advisers, according to the Post, are more concerned with the idea of Trump making yet another major personnel change in the midst of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

“Trump is back asking everyone what they think about Mulvaney,” one senior U.S. official told the Post. “He clearly is upset with him. He’s being advised that the last thing he needs is another major personnel move.”

Last weekend, the Washington Examiner reported on the speculation that Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) could be a potential Mulvaney replacement given his recent trips with Trump to New York and Kentucky — two states that the North Carolina Republican has no association with.

And Trump isn’t the only White House figure that Mulvaney reportedly clashes with. Last Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Mulvaney and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone have been disagreeing over who should take the lead in Trump’s impeachment inquiry response.
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WH Claims Trump Isn’t Watching Public Impeachment Testimonies As He RTs Clips Of Hearing

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed on Wednesday that President Donald Trump is not watching the public hearing currently underway in the House impeachment investigation.
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WH Claims Trump Isn’t Watching Public Impeachment Testimonies As He RTs Clips Of Hearing


White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed on Wednesday that President Donald Trump is not watching the public hearing currently underway in the House impeachment investigation.

“He’s in the Oval in meetings,” Grisham told CNN. “Not watching. He’s working.”

Yet Trump has already retweeted several clips of the hearing since it began.

Acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent are testifying on Trump’s attempt to leverage U.S. aid to Ukraine to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political enemies.

Trump tweeted “NEVER TRUMPERS” several hours before the hearing began at 10 a.m. EST, once again baselessly accusing witnesses in the impeachment probe of having a political bias against him.
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In Impeachment Surprise, Taylor Unveils New Evidence Directly Implicating Trump

The acting ambassador to Ukraine dropped a bombshell Wednesday, testifying to a previously unknown conversation that President Trump had that directly implicated him in the pressure campaign against…
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In Impeachment Surprise, Taylor Unveils New Evidence Directly Implicating Trump



The acting ambassador to Ukraine dropped a bombshell Wednesday, testifying to a previously unknown conversation that President Trump had that directly implicated him in the pressure campaign against Ukraine.

The explosive new claim did not come up in Taylor’s closed-door testimony — the ambassador said he’d only heard a staffer’s account of the conversation a few days ago.

Taylor revealed that on July 26, just one day after Trump pressed Ukraine’s president to pursue politically useful investigations, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland called Trump from a restaurant after meeting with Andrey Yermak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. One of Taylor’s staffers was present at the meeting and the restaurant, and overheard the phone conversation.

The staffer told Taylor that Trump asked Sondland about the status of “the investigations,” Taylor testified in his opening statement.

“The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone,” Taylor said, “asking Ambassador Sondland about ‘the investigations.’ Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.”

Under questioning later, Taylor affirmed that he understood “the investigations” to mean the investigations Trump wanted Ukraine to announce into the 2016 U.S. elections, the Bidens and Burisma, the natural gas company on whose board Hunter Biden sat.

Taylor testified that he hadn’t heard the story until recently and was “including it here for completeness.”

Following that call, Taylor testified, his staffer asked Sondland what Trump thought about Ukraine, to which Sondland responded that Trump “cares more about the investigations of Biden.”

“I take it the import of that is he cares more about that than he does about Ukraine?” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) asked Taylor Wednesday.

“Yes sir,” Taylor said.

As House Democrats build a case for Trump’s impeachment, the alleged overheard phone call marks yet another indication that Trump was personally interested in pressing Ukraine for politically useful investigations.
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Cornyn Doubts GOP Votes To Dismiss

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) doubts there are enough votes in the Senate to quickly dismiss any articles of impeachment against President Trump.
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Cornyn Doubts Senate GOP Has Enough Votes To Dismiss Impeachment Outright


Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) doubts there are enough votes in the Senate to quickly dismiss any articles of impeachment against President Trump.

While the first public impeachment hearing featuring acting Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor and top State Department official George Kent was underway in the House, Cornyn told reporters Wednesday that he doesn’t think a motion to quickly dismiss would get the 51 votes required in the Republican-controlled Senate to pass.

“There’s some people talking about trying to stop the bill, dismiss charges basically as soon as they get over here. I think that’s not going to happen. That would require 51 votes,” Cornyn said, according to The Hill.

The Hill reported that Cornyn believes it “would be hard to find 51 votes to cut the case off before the evidence is presented” and that a Senate trial is a “better course” if Trump is impeached by the House.

On the eve of the first public impeachment hearing, Cornyn took to Fox News Radio to call the impeachment hearings, which had been held behind closed doors until Wednesday, a “partisan process” while railing against House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA).

“Schiff has been interviewing people behind closed doors and then selectively leaking information that supports their narrative, finally they’re going to open it to the public,” Cornyn said during an interview with Fox News Radio host Guy Benson Tuesday. “But I don’t think anybody should be under the illusion that this is a fair process.”

Earlier this month, several Trump allies urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to ditch the notion of a fair Senate trial by dismissing the articles of impeachment outright. However, McConnell suggested Wednesday that the Senate doesn’t plan to cut short an impeachment trial because “the rules of impeachment are very clear,” according to Politico.

Last month, Cornyn shrugged off Taylor’s explosive closed-door testimony by telling reporters that he hadn’t read the career diplomat’s 15-page opening statement — which supported the quid pro quo that Trump has vehemently denied — because he believes the impeachment inquiry in general is “just an illegitimate process.”
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