New Hampshire Dems fear blowback from impeachment inquiry: report - Fox News

New Hampshire Democrats said Wednesday that blowback from the impeachment inquiry in the House will only hurt their party’s presidential candidates and will mobilize President Trump’s base before the 2020 election.

“Of course, I want impeachment from a moral perspective,” Michael Ceraso, a former New Hampshire director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, told Politico. "But from a political perspective, I don’t want to spend a year talking about how Democrats tried to impeach him and couldn’t pull it off.”

WHISTLEBLOWER COMPLAINT HAS BEEN DECLASSIFIED AND CONTAINS NO 'SURPRISES,' GOP LAWMAKER SAYS

“The Democrats become single-issue candidates, which weakens them," Ceraso said. He said the Democratic Party ought to focus on the 2020 ballot and would gain more ground if they instead put up a united front on electing Trump out of office.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump Tuesday evening. She specifically charged that the administration had violated the law by not turning over a whistleblower complaint concerning Trump's July telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The White House released a transcript of the call Wednesday that showed Trump did seek an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s family dealings in the country. The transcript did not demonstrate that Trump leveraged military aid to Ukraine to obtain a "promise" on the probe, as a widely cited report in The Washington Post had claimed. The full transcript has yet to be released.

“Although he’s certainly deserving of being impeached, I’m worried about what’s going to happen as a result of this,” Eric Swope, a Democratic voter from Harrisville, N.H., told the Boston Herald. “My fears are that his base will get all riled up. I’m afraid they’ll get all fired up.”

A Democratic strategist told Politico that impeachment hearings against former President Bill Clinton only bolstered his approval rating, quoting The Wire’s Omar Little in saying “‘If you come at the king, you best not miss.'” The strategist said if the outcome of the inquiry is anything less than overwhelming against Trump it will only create a “Mueller redux.”

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New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala told the Boston Herald he anticipates the outcome of the Granite State poll to show similar numbers. He said if the House fails to impeach the president, the poll may show a “mild boost” in New Hampshire in favor of Trump.

“The key groups to keep an eye on are the more centrist independents who may have voted for Trump in 2016,” Scala told the Herald. “The worst-case scenario for Trump would be if those votes take a hit.” The New Hampshire Democratic primary is scheduled to take place on February 11, 2020.

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2019-09-26 10:25:07Z
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Jacques Chirac, French President Who Championed European Identity, Is Dead at 86 - The New York Times

Jacques Chirac, who molded the legacy of Charles de Gaulle into a personal power base that made him one of the dominant leaders of France across three decades and a vocal advocate of European unity, has died. He was 86.

His death was confirmed on Thursday by the Fondation Chirac in Paris.

Mr. Chirac was elected to two consecutive terms as president, beginning in 1995, having already served as prime minister under centrist and Socialist presidents.

At his death, he was most remembered for his defiant stand against the United States-led war in Iraq, his ability to preside over a state in which power was divided between the left and the right — comity that is hardly imaginable today — and his championing the European Union.

His vision, he argued in 2000, was “not for a United States of Europe, but for a United Europe of States.”

Mr. Chirac had also been a highly visible mayor of Paris for 18 years, using that office as a springboard into national politics. Only years later would his mayoralty emerge as the source of a damaged reputation: In 2011, he was convicted of embezzlement and misusing public funds to finance his political party while running the city.

Historically, French politicians have seldom been tarnished by their financial peccadilloes, and that was the case with Mr. Chirac: He received a two-year suspended sentence, with his legacy largely intact. His presidency is generally recalled warmly in France, with many saying that he represented the nation well and in a manner that was “presidential.”

Pascal Perrineau, a professor of political science at the Paris School of International Affairs, a part of Sciences Po, said there were three main reasons for Mr. Chirac’s popularity. One was that he was able “to implant the idea of a president who is an ordinary person: a president who goes jogging, a president who rides a Vespa.”

“Second, he was able to bridge the left-right divide,” Professor Perrineau added. And third, “he presided over France in a relatively good time.”

To his opponents, Mr. Chirac — a tall, energetic, loquacious, but not quite eloquent man — was a political chameleon, able to adjust his policies according to his reading of what voters wanted (which did not make him much different from other French politicians of his day). But almost all agreed that he was basically a conservative, suspicious of the country’s powerful leftist labor unions and friendly to private enterprise.

As president, Mr. Chirac drifted away from a Gaullist belief in French self-sufficiency. Rather, he pressed hard for a new federal Europe, with the European Union assuming more and more power and, over time, eroding the sovereignty of member states.

His goal was the same as that of all post-World War II French leaders, including Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand: to prevent another war by hugging Germany — fraternally and self-protectively — in a tight economic and political union.

Yet when it came time to vote on a new constitution for Europe, a step that would have cemented the union, he did not campaign for it convincingly, and it lost in France, presaging the difficulties that the European Union would face in later years.

Before taking control of the Gaullist party in 1976, Mr. Chirac dallied with the Communist and Socialist Parties. But as an energetic young bureaucrat, he became the favorite of President Georges Pompidou, who had been de Gaulle’s anointed successor in 1969. A year earlier, Mr. Chirac had approved of the government crackdown on the student riots and the occupation of the Sorbonne, although he had no official role in it.

As mayor of Paris, starting in 1977, he had a spotlighted stage from which to begin a national political career. With a huge staff and budget, he kept the city humming with festivals and exhibitions.

He boasted of an array of international acquaintances, describing Saddam Hussein and the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, as his friends. He often upstaged his own president or prime minister, welcoming prominent guests like Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and giving lavish dinners at City Hall.

By the time he left the mayor’s office in 1995, there was increasing evidence that corruption and political skulduggery had been widespread during his tenure. But despite his later conviction in court, there were no allegations while he was in office that he had enriched himself. There were suspicions, however, that he must have been aware of the corrupt schemes of his associates, particularly of Jean Tiberi, who succeeded him as mayor.

Mr. Chirac had a ferocious temper. At a French-British summit meeting in 1988, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sought a cut in French agricultural subsidies, her obstinacy prompted an obscene outburst from Mr. Chirac. Even French-speaking Britons in the room had to consult their dictionaries to determine just how gravely he had insulted her. The next day, the British tabloid The Sun demanded in a banner headline, “Say Sorry, Rude Frog!”

But it was an otherwise winning popular touch that endeared Mr. Chirac to the French. An article in the newspaper Libération, which was often critical of him, conceded, “Even those who do not like him can acknowledge that the president of the Republic is a warm, demonstrative man, quick to become involved in individual problems and to help those hit by trouble.”

Much of the work he did to help the handicapped, with foundations and facilities, went deliberately unpublicized. “He had this incredible capacity to be interested in other people,” Professor Perrineau said. “I saw him follow the dossier of people who were ill, and he never wanted them to know it.”

In 2000, Mr. Chirac wrote that “people more and more have the feeling that their governments are cut off from their daily lives.”

“That is why I travel as often as possible to all parts of France,” he added, “to listen to people about their worries, their hopes.”

Jacques René Chirac was born in the Latin Quarter of Paris on Nov. 29, 1932, a few years after his father, Abel, then a minor bank official, and his mother, Marie Louise Valette, had moved to the capital from a village in central France.

In Paris, as his father began to rise as a banker, Jacques, then an only child, was spoiled by his mother, whose first child had died in infancy eight years before Jacques’s birth. When he came home from school he would find a piece of candy she had left out for him, its wrapper already opened to save him the trouble. She would ask visitors to wear white shirts, believing they were less likely to carry germs into the house and imperil her son.

In their apartment on the fashionable Rue de Seine, his father, who thought Jacques was lazy at school, would force him to listen to readings from Marcel Pagnol, Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo. Jacques went on to an elite secondary school in St. Cloud, west of Paris.

By the start of World War II, his father was a key adviser to Marcel Bloch, a founder of the aircraft maker Dassault, which produced the Mystère and Mirage fighter planes.

In 1950, at 18, Jacques went to sea on a tramp steamer running coal between Dunkirk, France, and Algiers, the capital of the rebellious French colony of Algeria. Encouraged by the captain, he began studying to become a merchant marine officer. But a few months later, his father showed up at the Dunkirk dock and took him home to enter the National School of Political Science, one of France’s most prestigious colleges.

As a student, Mr. Chirac attended a summer course at Harvard in 1953 and worked at a Howard Johnson’s in Boston, starting as a dishwasher and working his way up to counterman. He became engaged to a Radcliffe woman, whose father wrote him an angry letter telling him, basically, to get lost. From there, Mr. Chirac went to California and Louisiana, writing a long paper on the Port of New Orleans.

On his return to Paris, he became engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, who was from a wealthy family in Corrèze, southwestern France. They were married, and she was later elected a regional councilor.

Their younger daughter, Claude, became her father’s communications director when he won the presidency. Mrs. Chirac and Claude survive, as does a grandson. An elder daughter, Laurence, died in April 2016 after at least one suicide attempt.

In the late 1950s, Mr. Chirac attended the National School of Administration, which has produced several prime ministers, and did well there. He then obtained an army commission and became a lieutenant in charge of a unit of 32 men that saw combat in the Algerian war for independence. In one instance he helped rescue an ambushed unit.

The war was a defining experience. “For me,’’ he said in 1975, “it was a time of very great freedom” adding, “involved in the life of the men I commanded, it was the only time I had the feeling of command.”

Back in civilian life, he took a job in the main government accounting office, where he caught the attention of Mr. Pompidou, then the prime minister. He called Mr. Chirac “my bulldozer.”

“If I told Chirac that this tree is putting me in the shade,” he said, “he would cut it down in five minutes.”

By 1974, Mr. Chirac had become a member of Parliament and a rising star in the faltering Gaullist party, which had been leaderless since the retirement of de Gaulle in 1969.

President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a centrist, made Mr. Chirac prime minister, heading a government coalition of rightist and centrist parties. But the style of the two clashed. Mr. Giscard d’Estaing was an aristocratic intellectual, Mr. Chirac a less-polished, hard-driving politician. He quit as prime minister in 1976 and began his own march toward the presidency.

The first task was to weaken Mr. Giscard d’Estaing. He did this by competing with him for right-center votes in the first round of the 1981 presidential election. The split helped elect the Socialist candidate, Mr. Mitterrand, who served two seven-year terms, until 1994.

Mr. Mitterrand’s ambitious socialist agenda, including nationalizing banks and major industries, largely failed, leading the center-right to take control of the national legislature in 1986. Mr. Mitterrand was forced to name a center-right prime minister. He chose Mr. Chirac.

Mr. Mitterrand defeated Mr. Chirac for the presidency in 1988 and later chose Mr. Chirac’s old friend Édouard Balladur as prime minister. Mr. Chirac remained as head of the Gaullists and mayor of Paris, but his career seemed thwarted.

But in 1995, he made one of the most surprising comebacks in French politics. With polls showing Mr. Balladur likely to defeat the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, Mr. Chirac kept campaigning, pointing out that Mr. Balladur had promised not to run for the presidency when he became prime minister.

Mr. Chirac began to look like a leader again, attacking Mr. Balladur for his record and Mr. Jospin for his ideology. He perfected, one analyst said, “the art of being vague,” and won the presidency.

His term opened with a clear design to improve France’s image and enhance its role as a world power. Mr. Chirac shook a righteous finger at Washington and London, telling them to be more resolute about sending troops to end the war in Bosnia. But he made it clear he bore no Gallic grudges against the United States.

“France is not worried about a powerful United States,” he said in an interview, in English. “In the world of today, it is a real necessity. I don’t like the idea of presenting Europe and the United States as competitors. We are partners.”

Nevertheless, that same year, 1995, he angered most of the world’s governments by announcing that France would conduct nuclear tests at the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia.

After taking office, Mr. Chirac declared that he intended to reintegrate French military forces into the NATO structure, a project (which ultimately became bogged down) that the United States had wanted since de Gaulle removed them and kicked the NATO headquarters out of France in 1966.

Less than 10 years later, however, in a speech at the United Nations in New York, his foreign minister announced that France would not join the American-led coalition attacking Iraq and denounced the use of force.

Mr. Chirac’s ambivalent approach to Franco-American relations endured, though the United States’ expressions of solidarity over terrorism on French soil repaired some of the bonds that were attenuated by the war in Iraq.

Mr. Chirac was the first French leader to acknowledge that some French people were responsible for sending 75,000 Jews to death camps during World War II. Before his statement, in 1995, French leaders had said that only the Nazi occupiers bore responsibility.

“These dark hours forever sully our history and are an insult to our past and our traditions,” Mr. Chirac said. “Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state.”

Domestically, he announced cutbacks in social security benefits that led to weeks of strikes, which the French seemed to endure out of sympathy with the strikers. The cutbacks, Mr. Chirac argued, were needed if France was to meet European Union standards for participating in the unified currency system of the euro.

A few months after the strikes, polls showed him doing relatively well, impelling him to the worst mistake of his career: He called an early election in May 1997 to solidify the center-right’s control of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. The Socialists won the legislative majority.

In 2002, disaffected by government scandals, French voters shocked the political establishment in the first round of presidential voting in April by giving Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, a second-place finish with 16.9 percent of the vote. Mr. Chirac won 19.9 percent, and Mr. Jospin was third, with 16.2 percent.

But Mr. Chirac easily won a May runoff election, with 82 percent, and his center-right allies won parliamentary elections in June.

After the 2002 victory, Mr. Chirac appointed as prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, an affable regional leader but little known on the national stage. Under Mr. Raffarin, the National Assembly approved a law banning the wearing of Islamic head scarves and other religious symbols in public schools. Despite threats from Islamic extremists, who abducted two French journalists in Iraq, the law went into effect on Sept. 20, 2004.

The next year, in a national referendum, France turned its back on a half-century of European history by decisively rejecting a constitution for Europe, plunging the country into political disarray and jeopardizing both Mr. Chirac’s position and the cause of European unity.

Though many believed Mr. Chirac should have assumed full responsibility for the defeat and resigned, he resorted to an old French presidential ploy, ousting the affable but unpopular Mr. Raffarin and appointing his longtime protégé Dominique de Villepin as prime minister in an effort to restore confidence in the government.

In a televised address, Mr. Chirac said the top priority of the new government would be job creation, an acknowledgment that opposition to the constitution was motivated as much by anxiety over the French economy as it was by fears of an enlarged Europe.

Criticism of Mr. de Villepin’s appointment came swiftly, as the left and even some on the right said that Mr. Chirac was out of touch with his electorate. His approval ratings plummeted.

In September 2005, Mr. Chirac had a stroke that affected his eyesight and put him in a hospital bed. Though he recovered and resumed his duties, he announced early in 2007 that he would not seek re-election. His law-and-order interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, succeeded him.

Mr. Chirac left a remarkable legacy in the form of the Quai Branly Museum, which was renamed the Quai Branly Jacques Chirac Museum in 2016. It holds an eclectic mix of art, sculptures and decorative pieces, many from France’s former colonies but also from pre-Columbian societies and early Japanese ones, for which Mr. Chirac had a passion.

At his death, he had largely disappeared from public view. He was hospitalized several times. He had “memory problems” and would no longer make public appearances, his wife said in 2014.

“I have had an interesting life, full of events, and I am happy with it,” he said in an interview in 2000. He dismissed any notion that there was a secret, private Jacques Chirac. Asked by a reporter, “Who is Jacques Chirac?,” he replied: “Basically, it’s of little importance who he is in private, intimate life. It is only the political personality that should interest us.”

He added: “When one assumes a political responsibility, the essential is that he makes himself understood. But if he can make himself loved, so much the better.”

James F. Clarity, a former Times correspondent, died in 2007. Alissa J. Rubin and Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.

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2019-09-26 10:12:00Z
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Kurt Volker, Trump's part-time Ukraine envoy, played role in Giuliani outreach - NBC News

WASHINGTON — After President Donald Trump asked Ukraine’s president to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, on a possible corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, the Ukrainians turned to another American to facilitate the introduction: Ambassador Kurt Volker, Trump’s part-time envoy for Ukraine.

“Ambassador Volker called me,” Giuliani told NBC News in an interview Wednesday night.

Although Volker has mostly stayed under the radar since taking the job in 2017, his unusual arrangement as Trump’s special representative for Ukraine negotiations is attracting new attention amid revelations of his role in the ongoing Ukraine saga.

An unpaid volunteer, Volker spends most of his time engaged in outside projects, including his work at a Washington lobbying firm that continued to represent the Government of Ukraine for almost two years after Volker started as special envoy.

Volker’s role in the most recent controversy came to light as Giuliani tried to cast his efforts as fully coordinated and even prompted by the State Department.

The State Department has acknowledged that it was Volker who put Giuliani “in direct contact” with Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That introduction ultimately led to a meeting between Yermak and Giuliani in Spain.

But the State Department insists that Giuliani “does not speak on behalf of the U.S. government” and that he “acts in a personal capacity” as Trump’s lawyer. The State Department wouldn’t say why Volker made the introduction, other than that the Ukrainian aide requested it.

In his interview with NBC News, Giuliani said that Volker called him in late July — right around the time of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky — and asked if it was all right to give Giuliani’s number to the Zelensky’s aide.

“I was in a unique position to help with some of the things the State Department was working on,” Giuliani said. He declined to say what it was, stating that it was “privileged,” but said it related to “corruption in the Ukraine — and not only about Biden.”

Sept. 25, 201902:12

Giuliani then met with Yermak in Spain during what the former New York mayor described as a previously scheduled trip for other reasons.

He said he spoke to Yermak by phone on two instances after that and reported back to the State Department after all three interactions.“They sent me a closing text saying, ‘Thank you very much for your help,’” Giuliani said.

He said he did not receive a security clearance to meet with the Ukrainian aide in Spain.

And Giuliani told NBC News that he wasn’t contacted in April, after an earlier call that month between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart. "I don't have any recollection of anyone reaching out to me in reference to that call," he said, "nor do I recall anything unusual happening."

Giuliani’s unorthodox involvement in U.S.-Ukraine relations has illustrated how diplomacy with Ukraine during the Trump administration has been handled by a hodgepodge of various officials whose lines of authority are sometimes unclear. Although the U.S. had an ambassador to Ukraine, Trump recalled her in May, and in his July call with Zelenskiy, he described her as “bad news.”

Volker, by law, can only spend about one-third of his time working for the U.S. government, owing to his status as a “Special Government Employee.” That category, designed to enable private sector workers with particular expertise to serve the government temporarily, limits Volker to no more than 130 days out of any 365-day period spent on his Ukraine envoy duties.

Volker has been in the role since July 2017. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tasked the veteran U.S. diplomat with continuing efforts “to achieve peace in Ukraine.” His qualifications for the job were substantial: a former ambassador to NATO, he had served in top roles on European affairs in the White House, the State Department and for the late Sen. John McCain.

“At least in the beginning, it felt like he was injecting some new life into the process,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a top U.S. intelligence officer for Russia who left the administration in May. “He brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm and was really active in the region.”

But since joining the Trump administration, Volker has stayed equally busy with other projects. In addition to the Ukraine job, he’s retained roles as head of the McCain Institute for International Leadership and on the board of directors for CG Funds Trust, a mutual fund whose portfolio includes overseas holdings.

He’s also continued to work as a “senior international adviser” at his old lobbying firm, BGR Group, whose website touts Volker’s “deep European experience and relationships at the top levels of the trans-Atlantic diplomatic and policy communities.”

BGR Group’s lobbying clients include numerous foreign governments, including Somalia and Bahrain. The group worked for Saudi Arabia until terminating the contract last year after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, lobbying records show.

The firm, founded by former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, also continued to work for Ukraine long after Volker became the special representative. Ukraine’s government paid BGR Group $600,000 in 2017 for work on behalf of the National Reforms Council of Ukraine, under the Ukrainian presidency, and another $300,000 in 2018, Senate records show.

In fact, Volker’s firm did not stop working for the Ukraine government until this year, when the government changed after Zelenskiy’s election.

Sept. 25, 201903:24

There are no indications of impropriety by Volker or evidence that his work at BGR Group has involved Ukraine, which would be prohibited under criminal conflicts of interest laws. Still, ethics experts said the highly unusual arrangement risks the appearance of impropriety unless Volker and the government took concrete steps to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

“This would make me very nervous,” said Virginia Canter, a former White House ethics lawyer in the Obama and Clinton administrations now at the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It’s pretty sticky.”

Volker did not respond to inquiries from NBC News, but the State Department has said previously he serves “in an unpaid capacity” and “has recused himself from all Ukraine-related matters in his other work.” A department spokeswoman said Volker “is aware of and has complied with the conflict of interest rules.”

Still, the State Department declined to elaborate on what steps Volker and the department’s lawyers took to avoid conflicts, or to say how much time Volker spends working for the government and whether the State Department feels a part-time Ukraine envoy is sufficient given escalating tensions with Russia.

The State Department also would not comment on why Volker’s official biography says he “previously served” at BGR Group. Volker’s bio on the State Department website does not mention he’s still actively employed by BGR Group.

In December 2017, months after Volker started as the Ukraine representative, the Trump administration agreed to sell lethal weapons to Ukraine including Javelin anti-tank missiles. In his June call with Trump, the Ukrainian president told Trump he was “almost ready” to buy even more Javelins from the U.S. — just before Trump interjected to say he would “like you to do us a favor, though” — investigate Biden.

Massachusetts-based Raytheon makes the Javelin missiles in partnership with Lockheed Martin. Raytheon is also a client of BGR Group, which lobbied for the defense contractor on “defense appropriations and authorizations” for more than a decade. Senate records show Raytheon paid BGR Group about $120,000 per year until ending the contract at the end of 2018.

BGR Group would not say what accounts Volker works on or whether any firewall was set up to ensure no overlap between the group’s work for the Government of Ukraine and Volker’s work as the U.S. special representative. Jeff Birnbaum, president of BGR Public Relations, said the firm had no comment.

Ambassador Dan Fried, the former top U.S. diplomat for Europe who was Volker’s boss for years at White House National Security Council and the State Department, said Volker is the rare diplomat who has credibility with Ukrainian and other European officials despite “this administration’s track record on things Russia and the doubts you could expect.” He called Volker “tough on Russia” and “strong on NATO.”

“Kurt doesn’t have a confrontational style, but he has a style of clarity. He won’t obfuscate, he will cut to the chase,” Fried said. “The Russians really cannot stand being patronized and lectured to. He doesn’t do that. He’s just clear.”

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2019-09-26 10:20:00Z
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Impeachment is risky, but transcript supports media’s Ukraine reporting - Fox News

Nancy Pelosi’s giant step toward impeachment, which she resisted for so long, may well backfire against the Democrats.

But by any fair analysis, the transcript released yesterday of President Trump’s call with the Ukraine leader did not help his cause.

This is not a partisan observation, as I’ve repeatedly said and written that the media coverage of Trump is relentlessly negative and often unfair. And as I noted yesterday, the press has so badly overhyped so many Trump controversies, large and small, that there is a collective numbness to the latest cries of scandal.

MEDIA’S UKRAINE REPORTING PRESSURES PELOSI INTO FINALLY BACKING IMPEACHMENT

But now that we have the transcript of the July call, it’s clear that the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reports were largely accurate. It was not, as the president said yesterday, a “nothing call.”

That doesn’t mean it rises to the level of an impeachable offense. It doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate questions about Joe Biden’s intervention in Ukraine while his son was making big bucks from a gas giant.

But if you flipped the script—if Barack Obama had asked Ukraine in 2011 to help investigate one of Mitt Romney’s sons—Republicans would have gone nuclear.

One thing we learned from the transcript is that Trump brought up a company with Ukrainian ties that is said to have been involved in the hacking of Democratic emails during the last campaign.

This came right after Volodymyr Zelensky was talking about military aide, saying “we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”

“I would like you to do us a favor, though…I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”

Crowdstrike is the company supposedly tied to the 2016 hacking.

Zelensky is friendly throughout, promising cooperation, and was the first to bring up Rudy Giuliani.

SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE'S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF OF THE DAY'S HOTTEST STORIES

Then Trump played the Biden card and referenced the former vice president pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who had what was apparently an inactive case against the Ukrainian gas giant that was paying Hunter Biden big bucks.

“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair…Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the attorney general. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great…

“There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.”

So in just one week, we have confirmation that Trump did ask Zelensky to investigate his political rival, which would obviously help the president’s reelection prospects.

But was there pressure? A quid pro quo? Trump did not specifically bring up military aid, but then, he didn’t have to. Zelensky was acutely aware that the White House—the president did it personally—had held up $391 million in appropriated payments to his country.

“All they’re talking about is nonsense,” Trump said at the U.N. yesterday, adding: “It’s all fake stuff the media makes up with the Democrats, their partners, they’re one and the same, they’re partners.”

And Zelensky, at a televised meeting, said he never felt pressured by Trump.

As the pundits parse the call, this is ultimately not a legal question. High crimes and misdemeanors is whatever a majority of the House says it is.

Pelosi may come to regret unleashing these forces, since polls show that impeachment remains unpopular with a majority of the country.

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2019-09-26 08:14:51Z
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Khashoggi murder 'happened under my watch,' Saudi crown prince tells PBS - Reuters

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said he bears responsibility for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year by Saudi operatives “because it happened under my watch,” according to a PBS documentary to be broadcast next week.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, September 18, 2019. Mandel Ngan/Pool via REUTERS

Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, has not spoken publicly about the killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The CIA and some Western governments have said he ordered it, but Saudi officials say he had no role.

The death sparked a global uproar, tarnishing the crown prince’s image and imperiling ambitious plans to diversify the economy of the world’s top oil exporter and open up cloistered Saudi society. He has not since visited the United States or Europe.

“It happened under my watch. I get all the responsibility, because it happened under my watch,” he told PBS’ Martin Smith, according to a preview of a documentary, “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” set to air on Oct. 1, ahead of the one-year anniversary of Khashoggi’s death.

After initial denials, the official Saudi narrative blamed the murder on rogue operatives. The public prosecutor said the then-deputy intelligence chief ordered the repatriation of Khashoggi, a royal insider who became an outspoken critic, but the lead negotiator ordered him killed after discussions for his return failed.

Saud al-Qahtani, a former top royal adviser whom Reuters reported gave orders over Skype to the killers, briefed the hit team on Khashoggi’s activities before the operation, the prosecutor said.

Asked how the killing could happen without him knowing about it, Smith quotes Prince Mohammed as saying: “We have 20 million people. We have 3 million government employees.”

Smith asked whether the killers could have taken private government jets, to which the crown prince responded: “I have officials, ministers to follow things, and they’re responsible. They have the authority to do that.” Smith describes the December exchange, which apparently took place off camera, in the preview of the documentary.

A senior U.S. administration official told Reuters in June the Trump administration was pressing Riyadh for “tangible progress” toward holding to account those behind the killing ahead.

Eleven Saudi suspects have been put on trial in secretive proceedings but only a few hearings have been held. A U.N. report has called for Prince Mohammed and other senior Saudi officials to be investigated.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was last seen at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, where he was to receive papers ahead of his wedding. His body was reportedly dismembered and removed from the building, and his remains have not been found.

Reporting by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-khashoggi/khashoggi-murder-happened-under-my-watch-saudi-crown-prince-tells-pbs-idUSKBN1WB0HV

2019-09-26 05:40:00Z
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'We will respect the law and we will come out on October 31' Boris Johnson tells ITV - Guardian News

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2019-09-26 03:29:51Z
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Brexit: Boris Johnson flies back to U.K. after historic court defeat - NBC News

LONDON — Despite the best efforts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the doors of the British Parliament were thrust open again Wednesday, inviting some of the most raucous scenes of this febrile Brexit crisis.

Johnson suspended Parliament earlier this month, but a crushing, historic decision by the Supreme Court overturned that Tuesday, with 11 justices ruling unanimously that he did it to silence his Brexit opponents.

The prime minister was forced to cut short a visit to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, flying back to London on a red-eye just before Parliament reopened.

Lawmakers who thought they would not be sitting again until Oct. 14 rushed back to the capital to retake their seats Wednesday morning.

Once in the chamber, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox branded Parliament a "disgrace" for blocking the government's Brexit plans, as well as the early general election that Johnson says he wants.

His baritone voice rasping above the heckles of all sides, Cox said lawmakers were "too cowardly" and added that "the time is coming when even these turkeys won't be able to prevent Christmas."

Boris Johnson walks off stage at the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.Johannes Eisele / AFP - Getty Images

However — aside from a humiliating symbolic blow for the prime minister — it's not entirely clear what impact the decision will have on Johnson, Brexit, or Britain's political turmoil.

"This extra parliamentary time is going to be filled, there's no doubt about that," Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative Party lawmaker effectively fired by Johnson over Brexit, told NBC News. "Holding the government to account and asking questions about what the government is doing is what Parliament is all about."

FT editorial on the Supreme Ciuet’s damning indictment of Boris Johnson’s abuse of power. A politician with a shred of self respect would resign. The courts have spoken; now the people should have their say in an election #Prorogued https://t.co/zZ4bWJVwxQ via @financialtimes

— Lionel Barber (@lionelbarber) September 24, 2019

Johnson landed in London shortly before the parliamentary session started. If he makes a speech to the Commons it would be a landmark event following such an unprecedented court ruling against him.

In another political era, such a scathing judgement from the highest court in the land might have been expected to produce resignations and perhaps an implosion of the government itself.

The prime minister's usual opponents were joined in calls for Johnson's resignation by the Financial Times, a sober, even-handed newspaper that does not print such opinions lightly.

"Faced with such a damning judgment, any premier with a shred of respect for British democracy and the responsibilities of his office would resign," the paper said in an editorial.

The messages from those in Johnson's government, however, have not been ones of contrition.

Michael Gove, a senior member of Johnson's Cabinet, told Sky News that the government "respectfully disagreed" with the ruling.

The court supported the widely held belief among government opponents and independent experts that Johnson shut down the legislature purely to stop lawmakers scrutinizing his plans to leave the E.U.

He has promised to do this on Oct. 31, with or without an agreed deal with European leaders.

Feb. 7, 201909:57

Lawmakers, including many from Johnson's own Conservative Party, have said they will do everything they can to stop what official forecasts say could be a damaging "no deal Brexit."

They have already passed a major bit of legislation on this front. In the dwindling days before the suspension kicked in, they pushed through a bill that would force Johnson to request a Brexit extension if he doesn't get a deal by Halloween.

Another way to use the extra time might be for the opposition to try to force an enfeebled government into an early general election. But right now there is no guarantee the opposition would win. And defeat would hand the Brexit initiative right back to Johnson, giving him the power he currently lacks to finish his plans.

"Our priority is to prevent a no deal exit and when that has been achieved ... we will then be ready with a motion of no confidence," opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told the BBC, referring to the "vote of no confidence" that would be needed to depose the prime minister.

Nevertheless, there is plenty for lawmakers to do, according to Jack Simson Caird, a former constitutional law specialist in the House of Commons Library, which provides briefings to lawmakers.

"You need Parliament to keep its foot on the pedal and keep the pressure up at a time like this," said Caird, who is now a senior research fellow at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, a research group in London. "The general point will be: Just ask the government what they are doing."

Alexander Smith

Alexander Smith is a London-based senior reporter for NBC News Digital.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/brexit-boris-johnson-flies-back-u-k-after-historic-court-n1058461

2019-09-25 12:17:00Z
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