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TRUMP Impeached?

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sekasi
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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by sekasi » Oct Tue 15, 2019 7:42 am

Graveller wrote:
Oct Tue 15, 2019 3:19 am
No, give Trump a break (and another term): 8 years of Trump-havoc is the only remedy against another populist bilionnaire becoming president in the next 50-60 years. It is about educating the people.
And from where I am sitting, there are no decent alternatives anyway.

(By 2080, the next generations will have forgotten about Trump, and they will elect their own populist: but that will be their problem).
I wish that was possible. I am beginning to believe the only people who can be educated are the kids.

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by Graveller » Oct Tue 15, 2019 9:09 am

sekasi wrote:
Oct Tue 15, 2019 7:42 am

I wish that was possible. I am beginning to believe the only people who can be educated are the kids.
Oh, they will be educated to some degree but do not expect them to admit so in public... But when voting, they will think twice.

(to give an extreme example: those voting for Hitler in the 30ties realized their stupidity 15 years later, but many never admitted that they once supported that political party - but when voting again, they did not make that mistake again)

To be very clear: I do not want/like Trump, and many amongst you do not want/like Trump, but part of me thinks that Trump is exactly what the USA needs to fix parts of its society. To get rid of the white, old-men elite and power of (oil, gun, etc) industry, they need to inflict enough damage to the society.

Sometimes you have to go to rock-bottom in order to get everyone on the same side again... Unfortunately, rock-bottom is never a nice place to be.
"Never argue with an idiot - they take you down to their level and then beat you on experience"

"Don't wrestle with a pig: you both get dirty, but the pig actually likes it"

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by sekasi » Oct Tue 15, 2019 12:38 pm

Graveller wrote:
Oct Tue 15, 2019 9:09 am

To be very clear: I do not want/like Trump, and many amongst you do not want/like Trump, but part of me thinks that Trump is exactly what the USA needs to fix parts of its society. To get rid of the white, old-men elite and power of (oil, gun, etc) industry, they need to inflict enough damage to the society.

Sometimes you have to go to rock-bottom in order to get everyone on the same side again... Unfortunately, rock-bottom is never a nice place to be.
I agree with you , America needed Trump in order for us to face most of the things we like to hide, but I don't know if we need another 4 years of this wreck. I didn't know 4 years could be so long. Jesus take the wheel. :cry:

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by djmm1962 » Oct Tue 15, 2019 12:45 pm

LOL, Jesus take the wheel is right. I don't think the planet could take another four years of Trump & Co. Crime Syndicate, with disruptions on every continent. He has to go NOW!!

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by Grossefavourite » Oct Tue 15, 2019 12:50 pm

Trump’s impeachment barricade crumbles
Key witnesses are ignoring Trump and delivering bombshell testimony in Democrats’ Ukraine investigation.
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Former White House adviser Fiona Hill leaves Capitol Hill Monday after giving closed-door testimony to a panel of impeachment investigators. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Donald Trump's impeachment blockade has collapsed.


The president's former top Russia adviser, Fiona Hill — the first White House official to cooperate in Democrats' investigation of the Ukraine scandal — has sketched for lawmakers a trail of alleged corruption that extends from Kiev to the West Wing. In dramatic testimony on Monday, she roped in some of Trump's top advisers as witnesses to the unfolding controversy.

And on Tuesday, a senior State Department official, George Kent, appeared on Capitol Hill to testify about his knowledge of the episode despite an attempt by administration lawyers to block him, according to a source working on the impeachment inquiry. The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for his testimony Tuesday morning, and Kent, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, complied.

It's the latest evidence that the White House’s stonewalling against congressional requests for documents and testimony is crumbling — and Democrats are feeling a new sense of momentum.

"Thank you to patriots like @realDonaldTrump appointee Fiona Hill who chose to ignore the obstruction from Trump and gave testimony to Congress today," said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). "The truth will keep coming out. And Trump cannot stop it."

In closed-door testimony described by a source in the room, Hill detailed increasing alarm among White House officials over the shadow diplomacy efforts of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who mounted a months-long campaign to dirty Biden on unfounded charges.

She said she shared her concerns with then-National Security Adviser John Bolton who encouraged her to report her concerns about Giuliani's efforts to a National Security Council lawyer — which she did twice. Hill also connected Giuliani's efforts to Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, indicating that Bolton characterized their efforts on Ukraine as a "drug deal."

According to a source in the room Monday, Hill said Bolton compared Giuliani to "a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up."

And the flood of damaging information surely isn't over.

As lawmakers return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, a growing number of witnesses this week will describe their own role in the controversy, even as the White House has vowed not to engage with House Democrats’ “illegitimate” impeachment effort. The Democratic Caucus is also set to meet Tuesday night after a two-week recess to discuss the impeachment inquiry.

On Wednesday, Michael McKinley, who abruptly resigned last week as a top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, intends to testify before lawmakers.

On Thursday comes Gordon Sondland, the EU ambassador whose text messages revealed by lawmakers indicated he was aware of efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden. Sondland is reportedly ready to deflect any blame onto Trump about whether there was any quid pro quo.

Congressional investigators on Friday will hear from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper, who oversees Russia- and Ukraine-related matters at the Pentagon.

Despite the series of breakthroughs, Democrats will still face resistance from the White House to some of their high-level requests.

When asked whether Trump's budget office planned to comply with a Tuesday subpoena deadline for documents, a senior administration official did not say, instead pointing to a White House letter last week that deemed the House impeachment probe "unconstitutional."

But Hill's account underscores how the president's once-impenetrable barrier to meaningful testimony in Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has been blown apart.

"The walls are closing in. The details we are learning about the shadow foreign policy operation Trump has been running to benefit himself personally are stunning," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "Why have a democracy, if we allow this to happen without consequence?"

Though Hill's testimony was the most damning to date, she wasn't the first to put a crack in Trump's wall.

Earlier this month, former Ambassador Kurt Volker provided text messages between himself and other diplomats in which they described concerns that Trump was using a potential White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and possibly even military aid, as a cudgel to force the besieged country to probe Biden. Volker testified for nine hours to lawmakers and aides behind closed doors. Trump has forcefully denied any sort of "quid pro quo" occurred.

Last Friday, former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified about her abrupt removal by Trump, which came amid a smear campaign by Trump's allies that accused her of disloyalty. Yovanovitch's ouster in May infuriated senior State Department hands, and she testified that the ability of bad actors to engineer her removal could be exploited by foreign adversaries.

Kent served under Yovanovitch in Ukraine for three years. A former State Department official said Kent is “able to peel back layers of the onion that many people can’t,” and he is likely to speak out against Yovanovitch’s ouster.

Meanwhile, Giuliani, who is facing a mounting set of legal woes, is due to provide documents to Congress under a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, but it's unclear if he intends to cooperate.

Giuliani has been defiant and indicated he intends to be watching the third game of a New York Yankees playoff series — and possibly even attend the afternoon ballgame.

House Republicans have said little about the substance of Hill's testimony but have complained vehemently about Democrats' decision to hold witness interviews behind closed doors. They say a matter as weighty as the potential impeachment of the president should be conducted publicly.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has countered this complaint, arguing that the secrecy surrounding the initial interviews is meant to prevent witnesses from aligning their statements.

Caitlin Emma and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/1 ... ion-046915

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by Grossefavourite » Oct Tue 15, 2019 3:45 pm

Bolton Objected to Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Calling Giuliani ‘a Hand Grenade’

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WASHINGTON — The effort to pressure Ukraine for political help provoked a heated confrontation inside the White House last summer that so alarmed John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, that he told an aide to alert White House lawyers, House investigators were told on Monday.

Mr. Bolton got into a tense exchange on July 10 with Gordon D. Sondland, the Trump donor turned ambassador to the European Union, who was working with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to three people who heard the testimony.

The aide, Fiona Hill, testified that Mr. Bolton told her to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council about a rogue effort by Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to the people familiar with the testimony.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Mr. Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people at the deposition. (Another person in the room initially said Mr. Bolton referred to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mulvaney, but two others said he cited Mr. Sondland.)

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by Grossefavourite » Oct Wed 16, 2019 11:30 am

Mulvaney emerges as a key facilitator of the campaign to pressure Ukraine

In late May, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting that stripped control of the country’s relationship with Ukraine from those who had the most expertise at the National Security Council and the State Department.

Instead, Mulvaney put an unlikely trio in charge of managing the U.S.-Ukraine account amid worrisome signs of a new priority, congressional officials said Tuesday: pressuring the fledgling government in Kiev to deliver material that would be politically valuable to President Trump.

The work of those “three amigos,” as they came to call themselves — diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, plus Energy Secretary Rick Perry — has come to light in recent days through newly disclosed text messages and the testimony of government witnesses appearing before an impeachment inquiry in Congress.

But Mulvaney’s connections to the administration’s troubled interactions with Ukraine are also beginning to surface. Mulvaney’s role in enlisting Sondland and the others to take over relations with Ukraine was revealed Tuesday in testimony by George Kent, the State Department’s Ukraine expert, according to Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who participated in the closed-door hearing before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees.

Mulvaney declined requests for comment. Some of his defenders have said he knew very little about the details of the trio’s efforts in Ukraine and was mainly orchestrating meetings for the president.

“I don’t remember any substantive conversation with Mick. I don’t remember him approving, disapproving, getting involved, having an interest,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, who, as Trump’s personal lawyer, also served as the president’s emissary to Ukraine. “Mulvaney was not a big player in this. I dealt with Volker and Sondland.”

....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by Grossefavourite » Oct Wed 16, 2019 3:44 pm

Fourth defendant in Giuliani associates’ case arrested at New York airport

David Correia, the fourth defendant in a campaign finance case involving business associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, was arrested Wednesday morning at a New York City airport, officials said.

Correia has been charged with participating in a scheme to use foreign money to build political support for a fledgling recreational marijuana business in Nevada and other states, according to an indictment unsealed last week that also charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with conspiracy and making false statements to campaign finance regulators.

The other three defendants were quickly arrested by the FBI, but Correia’s whereabouts have been unclear until Wednesday morning. Correia is expected to make a brief court appearance Wednesday, and all four defendants are due to appear before a judge Thursday.

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by djmm1962 » Oct Thu 17, 2019 6:40 am

LOL!!

Trump really went off the deep end yesterday!! He said the brave Kurdish fighters, of which 11,000 have died for US, "not angels" and they have plenty of sand to play with. He seems to be getting his world pov directly from Putin and other autocrats, like he's brainwashed!! Then he said he asked the Italian government to open an investigation as well.

The House voted in a huge bipartisan majority to Condemn Trump's Turkey policy. Then of course he calls a meeting, then tells The Speaker she called the meeting, just to go off on her saying she's just third rated (or third grader)!! The man is UNHINGED!! And like the child he is he played the "I know I am but what are you" spin by releasing a photo of her standing up in the meeting (note all the bended heads of the men surrounding him). Just shameful!!

Impeach and Remove Immediately!!

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Re: TRUMP Impeached?

Post by djmm1962 » Oct Thu 17, 2019 7:04 am


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