Democrats invite Trump to testify in impeachment inquiry
- by Joann Nelson
- in Sci-tech
- — Nov 18, 2019
House Democrats have alleged that Trump violated his oath of office by asking a foreign leader to investigate a rival for personal gain.
On this October 17, 2019, file U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, heart, arrives for a interview with the Property Committee on Abroad Affairs, Home Everlasting Select Committee on Intelligence, and Property Committee on Oversight and Reform on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Tim Morrison also said he did not hear anything illegal during President Trump's call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, according to the released transcript of his testimony.
Republicans dismissed the witnesses brought forward as not having firsthand knowledge of presidential wrongdoing and that their testimonies were exclusively "hearsay". It is a reference to Burisma, the gas company in Ukraine where Mr Biden's son Hunter served on the board.
Asked what effect Trump's tweet might have on her and other witnesses, Yovanovitch appeared unnerved.
Witness tampering including intimidation is a crime, but Schiff would not say whether it was an impeachable offence, or if Democrats would make it the subject of an article of impeachment.
"It's clear that the Trump administration foreign policy is chaotic and incoherent with one exception: Many of his actions benefit Russia", Lieu said.
And when she read the memorandum of Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky - in which the U.S. leader called her "bad news" and said she was "going to go through some things" - she said "it sounded like a threat".
Like other officials who have testified in the inquiry, he expressed alarm at the shifting situation in Ukraine with Giuliani's influence.
Abruptly after the alternate with Sondland throughout an global gathering in Warsaw, Morrison known as his boss, John Bolton, then Trump's national security adviser.
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And he recalled Sondland speaking directly to Trump about the investigations and the military aid.
In his private testimony to impeachment investigators manufactured common public Saturday, Morrison recounted that Sondland additionally informed him he was discussing the Ukraine issues particularly with Trump.
"He assured President Zelensky that there was no change in USA policy in terms of our fuII - full-throated support for Ukraine and its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and assured that he would convey back to President Trump what he had heard from President Zelensky in terms of Zelensky's good progress on reforms, so that hopefully we could get a decision on the security assistance as soon as possible", Williams said of Pence.
Reports said David Holmes testified behind closed doors that he heard Sondland telling the president Ukraine would move forward to investigate the Bidens - since Zelensky would do "anything you ask him to do". Democrats say it was still wrong for the president to try to trade the aid for "a favor", and that the effort was only foiled when Congress learned of the aid being blocked and launched a bipartisan effort to free it up. The prosecutor general is Ukraine's top legal official. A whistleblower's complaint about that call sparked the impeachment inquiry.
Stuck with a relatively lackluster transcript, House intel committee chair Adam Schiff demanded Trump release the "thousands" of documents the impeachment committee has requested as well.
"He told me he had just gotten off the phone with the President", Morrison said, adding: "He told me, as is related here in Ambassador Taylor's statement, that there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelensky must announce the opening of the investigations and he should want to do it". Americans are deeply split over impeachment, much as they are over the president himself. In many cases, the right of Republicans to cross-examine Democrats' witnesses has even been limited, Scaringi said in his column.
"The President was not yet ready to approve the release of the assistance", Morrison said of the "one-on-one meeting" between Trump and Bolton.
Trump has said he has no recollection of the overheard call and has suggested he barely knew Sondland, a wealthy donor to his 2016 campaign.
In the rare weekend session, lawmakers drilled into Trump's decision, against the advice of national security advisers, including John Bolton, to withhold funding from the ally, a young democracy bordering hostile Russian Federation.