Democrats continued theirwhirlwindinvestigationof Donald Trump on Tuesday as another witness testified before Congress, building momentum towards a likely impeachment of the president.
Trump sought to fight back by drawing attention toa TV interviewin which Hunter Biden, the son of the former vice-president Joe Biden, acknowledged “poor judgment ”in his business dealings in Ukraine but denied any wrongdoing.
George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state, became the latest official to appear in private before three House committees. In emails supplied to Congress by the state department inspector general, Kent expressed concerns about White House efforts to remove the then ambassador to Ukraine.
The impeachment inquiry is moving at dizzying speed.The Axios website notedthat if everyone agrees to appear, Democrats will have interviewed 11 administration officials by the end of next week. Every witness has “bolstered the case against Trump”, Axios added, leaving White House officials demoralized or panicked.
In apress conferenceon Tuesday evening, the House intelligence committee chair, Adam Schiff, said House Democrats had “made dramatic progress in answering some of the questions surrounding that July telephone call ”between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Pelosi said the House was on a “path to truth” but said a full vote to authorize the inquiry was not yet necessary, despite White House criticism.
“There is no requirement that we have a vote. We will not be having a vote, ”she said.
“We are on the path of fairness,” she continued. “We are not here to call bluffs. We are on a path that is taking us to a path to truth, a timetable that respects our constitution. ”
The hearings have been held behind closed doors but Democrats may yet decide to publish transcripts. Trump, who has been leading his own defense,tweetedon Tuesday: “Democrats are allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings. If Republicans ever did this they would be excoriated by the Fake News. Let the facts come out from the charade of people, most of whom I do not know, they are interviewing for nine hours each, not selective leaks. ”
The torrent of damaging revelations continued on Monday when Fiona Hill, a British-born former senior director for Europe and Russia on the White HouseNational Security Council(NSC), spoke to the House committees for 10 hours.
According to theNew York Timesand theWall Street Journal, Hill described a sharp exchange on 10 July between the then national security adviser, John Bolton, and the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. It concerns the role played by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor commonly described as Trump’s lawyer, in trying to persuade the Ukrainian government to open investigations into Democrats including Biden.
Hill said Bolton instructed her to tell the NSC’s attorney that Giuliani was acting in concert with White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, in a rogue operation with legal implications.
“I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton instructed Hill to tell the NSC lawyer, according to her testimony.
She said Bolton had told her on an earlier occasion: “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”
Article 1 of the United States constitution gives theHouse of Representativesthe sole power to initiate impeachment and the Senate the sole power to try impeachments of the president. A president can be impeached if they are judged to have committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” – although the constitution does not specify what “high crimes and misdemeanors” are.
The process starts with the House of Representatives passing articles of impeachment. A simple majority of members need to vote in favor of impeachment for it to pass to the next stage. Democrats currently control the house, with 235 Representatives.
The chief justice of the US supreme court then presides over the proceedings in the Senate, where the president is tried, with senators acting as the jury. For the president to be found guilty two-thirds of senators must vote to convict. Republicans currently control the Senate, with 53 of the 100 senators.
Two presidents have previously been impeached, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Andrew Johnson in 1868, though neither was removed from office as a result. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before there was a formal vote to impeach him.
Martin Belam
Hill also testified on Monday about Trump’s decision, taken despite strenuous objections from aides including herself, to recall the ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
TheWashington Postreported that Hill had confronted Sondland over Giuliani’s activities, which were not coordinated with officials charged with carrying out foreign policy. Sondland is due to give his version of events on Thursday.
The impeachment inquiry was sparked bya whistleblower complaintfiled in August that in part describeda 25 July phone callbetween Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump requested the “favor” of an investigation into Biden, a potential rival in the 2020 election.
Trump and Republicans have repeated unproven allegations of corruption againstHunter Biden, who was on the board of a gas company in Ukraine while his father was involved in international efforts to curb corruption in its government.
Breaking his silence over his business dealings in Ukraine and China, the younger Biden told ABC News on Tuesday he had allowed himself to become involved in what he described as “a swamp”. But he repeatedly denied ever discussing his foreign work with his father.
“In retrospect, I think there was poor judgment on my part,” he said. “I know I did nothing wrong at all, but it was poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is… a swamp in many ways.”
Several Democratic strategistshave questioned the wisdom of Hunter Biden speaking out. The fear is that it might switch the focus away from Trump’s efforts to enlist the help of the Ukraine government and on to the president’s home ground: his unsubstantiated claims of corruption on the part of the Bidens.
The week could deteriorate rapidly for Trump, whose effort to rally defenders in his own party has been damaged by concerns about a growing disaster in northernSyria, following Trump’s abrupt pullback there, and a sense that major secrets attached to the Ukraine scandal are yet to emerge.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon,Giulianiformally notified the House that he wouldn’t submit documents demanded via subpoena by the Trump-Ukraineimpeachment inquiry.
In a letter to the relevant committee chairmen from his erstwhile lawyer, Jon Sale, the inquiry was condemned as “an unconstitutional, baseless and illegitimate ‘impeachment inquiry’” and the subpoena called “overbroad and unduly burdensome”.
The government budget office said that it would not comply with the demand for documents, either.
The subpoena issued to the office of management and budget related to the delay in military funds toUkraine.
That issue is at the heart of theimpeachment inquiry, in relation to allegations that Trump held back congressionally approved aid to Ukraine as a form of pressure to persuade the new president,Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate the Bidens.
Giuliani is also facing scrutiny overhis dealings involving Turkey. On Tuesday theWashington Post reportedthat he had privately urged Trump to extraditeFethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric accused by Turkey of instigating a failed 2016 Coup. It remains unclear why Giuliani would have pushed the issue, which is of great importance to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to the Post.
Vivian Ho contributed reporting
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