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LAST UPDATE | 13 Nov 2019
THE FIRST TELEVISED hearings of the impeachment probe into Donald Trump begun today, revealing new evidence as Trump himself said he was “too busy” to watch it.
The top US diplomat in Ukraine levelled a stark new accusation about White House efforts to pressure on the Ukrainian government to investigate Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden.
William Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, told the House Intelligence Committee today, that he was told Trump cared more about the probe into his likely 2020 rival Biden, than he did about Ukraine.
Trump is accused by Democrats in the House of Representatives of abusing his power by using US military aid to pressure Kiev into opening an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
Trump, who maintains he did nothing wrong, dismissed the impeachment inquiry as a “witch hunt” and said he was too busy to watch the first televised hearings.
Details of Taylor’s evidence
Taylor, who testified in a closed hearing last month, said he had since become aware of a telephone call between Trump and Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, that was overheard by a member of Taylor’s staff.
Taylor said the staff member heard Trump asking Sondland about the status of the investigations. He said the staff member asked Sondland after the call what Trump thought about Ukraine.
“Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cared more about the investigations of Biden,” Taylor said.
In his opening statement, Taylor recalled his opposition to making US military aid to Ukraine contingent on Ukraine opening an investigation of the Bidens.
“Withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be crazy,” he said. “I believed that then and I believe it now.”
Taylor said an “irregular policy channel” involving former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, was pushing for the Ukrainian probe into the Bidens.
On Friday, Marie Yovanovitch, the US ambassador to Ukraine whom Trump removed earlier this year, will testify.
The grounds for impeachment
Democrats have amassed evidence that Trump sought to leverage Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s desire for a meeting between the two leaders and for some $391 million in aid to get Ukraine to find dirt on Biden, who could face Trump in next year’s presidential election.
The key evidence is the official White House transcript of a 25 July phone call showing Trump pressuring Zelensky to open investigations into Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory.
The White House has refused to hand over other records on Ukraine policy or allow top Trump aides involved in the decision to pressure Zelensky to testify.
Yesterday, Trump’s chief of staff Mick Mulvaney – who has publicly confirmed the broad outlines of Democrats’ allegations – rejected a subpoena to appear before the committee.
Trump previously called the inquiry “corrupt” and “illegal,” and maintains he did nothing wrong.
“Democrats in Washington would rather pursue outrageous hoaxes and delusional witch hunts, which are going absolutely nowhere. Don’t worry about it,” he said confidently in a speech to the Economic Club of New York yesterday.
But the investigation threatens to make him only the third US president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, and placed on trial in the Senate for possible removal from office.
“On the basis of what the witnesses have had to say so far, there are any number of potentially impeachable offenses: including bribery, including high crimes and misdemeanors,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who will lead the hearings, told NPR radio yesterday.
Neither Johnson or Clinton was convicted and removed. But in 1974 Richard Nixon resigned in the face of certain impeachment and removal from office for the Watergate scandal.
Hearings are expected to be fiery as a series of government officials take the stand to testify on Trump’s Ukraine machinations during the middle of this year.
Both sides have spent the past several days rehearsing for the showdown.
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These are little mini bombs waiting in your pocket or in your hand to go off. I certainly would not like to see anyone with a Samsung note on board a plane
@Alan Scott: Please, it’s a Note 7 not the other ‘Note’ Phones
So
The other Note phones are safe, it’s only the 7 they’re warning against.
Jeez they’re on the ball,this has only been going on about a month or two were they on holidays or something
I was on a Aer Lingus flight a week and a half ago, and passengers were told if they had the note 7 to leave it powered off for the flight. Just saying.
They should be banned from planes surely?
Nothing at all wrong with this pho
Very few comments on here ,guess it’s because it is a Samsung if it had been an Apple phone bet the journal servers would have crashed.Oh by the way my iPhone six plus is going really well great product as usual from Apple.
Lithium ion batteries are inherently unstable and prone to a condition called “thermal runaway” which does exactly what it says on the tin.
A 747 cargo plane was brought down in the US when its cargo of batteries went critical. The crew were killed. There have also been fires on the latest 777 from its own onboard system batteries of the same type.
@David, the battery system issue concerned the B787, which resulted in the grounding of all 50 B787s (at the time) and the grounding lasted for a period of time. It had nothing to do with the B777, though there has been a number of fire incidences with the B777 cockpit and MEC areas over the years.
I think you need mean an US registered B747F that crashed shortly after take off from Dubai.
Was in the US last week and the 4 flights I got had a separate safety warning that all note7′s had to be powered off at all times and not allowed in the cargo hold
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/A_world_wide_ban_on_illegal_Chemtrail_spraying/?wfRIadb This is also straight from the very concerned body of ex footballers IAA.
The IAA advisory is a follow on from the FAA’s directive to airlines.
have your say