Kamis, 03 Oktober 2019
Trump officials plead ignorance to cover for Trump - Washington Post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ds6Ab4ZUdM
2019-10-03 10:18:14Z
52780396614693
Trump’s impeachment defiance spooks key voting blocs - POLITICO
President Donald Trump was in trouble with women voters long before House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry against him last week. Since then, his standing has grown only worse.
Nearly a half-dozen polls conducted since last Tuesday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed her colleagues to proceed with pursuing Trump for potentially impeachable offenses, have shown women voters rallying behind her decision, exacerbating concerns among White House allies that white women who helped carry Trump to victory in 2016 can no longer be counted on next November.
The development comes as independent voters and college-educated whites — two more demographic groups that could make or break Trump’s reelection bid — have shown signs of softening their resistance to impeachment. Taken together, the latest polls paint an alarming picture for the president, whose base is sticking by him but cannot be counted on by themselves to deliver him a second term.
As more voters digest the allegations against Trump — that he asked Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election — both parties are likely to gain a clearer picture of where the public stands on impeachment. And more indications that support for impeachment is trending in Democrats’ favor could spur a moment of reckoning for Republicans on Capitol Hill. Should impeachment gain the support of an undeniable majority, Republicans who previously declined to distance themselves from the president could quickly change their calculus — setting Trump on the same lonely course that led to President Richard Nixon’s Watergate-era resignation in August 1974.
“From my point of view as a Republican pollster, the president’s base has been solid so far,” said Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, which oversaw an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted last week. “But college-educated whites have electoral significance for us in the suburbs and can completely shift the dynamic and the conversation just by virtue of shifting the overall numbers.”
In some cases, that shift has already begun.
Back-to-back polls this week found greater support for the impeachment proceedings than opposition among white voters with college degrees — a group that backed Trump over Hillary Clinton by a slightly greater margin in 2016, according to publicly available exit data. Fifty percent of college-educated whites in an NPR/Marist College survey said they approved of House Democrats’ decision to launch the formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. That compares to a narrower margin of support for the move, 45-43, in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.
“If you look at college-educated whites, those are probably some of the most engaged voters. They are a big and important chunk of the electorate and they have shifted the most resolutely toward impeachment so far,” Roberts said.
Even more dangerous for the president and his allies is the apparent groundswell of support for impeachment among women — including self-described independents, white women with college degrees and women in suburban communities. Five polls conducted since last Tuesday have shown majorities of women endorsing Democratic efforts to remove Trump from office, ranging from 57 percent of registered female voters who strongly or somewhat approve of impeachment in a CBS survey released Sunday to 62 percent of women in a Quinnipiac University survey released Monday who said they think “Trump believes he is above the law.”
The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found a 15-point gap between independent women who support impeachment (48 percent) and voters within the same demographic who oppose it (33 percent). A similar gap emerged in the NPR/Marist survey among suburban women, 57 percent of whom said they support the impeachment inquiry versus 39 percent who disapprove of the move.
“I really don’t like where we are right now,” said one prominent Republican pollster.
To be sure, some of the same polls include evidence suggesting impeachment could become a political risk for Democrats as they head into a heated election year. And the rapid-pace environment in which the impeachment process has already unfolded, combined with varying levels of understanding of the process itself, mean a lot of voters are still in “wait-and-see mode,” according to Roberts.
“There are some people who say, ‘Yes, of course Congress should look into this,’ but there is still a lot of confusion as to what comes next,” said Ryan Winger, a Colorado-based pollster, citing a CBS survey in which 12 percent of voters said they believed Trump “would be removed from office immediately” if the House votes to impeach him. (The next step in the impeachment process would typically include a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, in accordance with long-standing procedural rules.)
A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday also highlighted areas of confusion involving the facts that led to the impeachment inquiry against Trump. Among Republican respondents, only 40 percent said they believed Trump mentioned the possibility of an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter on his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led Pelosi to pull the trigger on impeachment proceedings. Trump does not use the word “investigation” in a transcript of the call made public by the White House, but does claim the former vice president “went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution” of his son.
“Towards the end of last week, as more people knew about what was going on and were processing the messages coming from Democrats and the Trump campaign, the number of Republicans who said [Trump’s] behavior was appropriate actually went up,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University’s Polling Institute. “This told us how powerful partisan filters can be for just interpreting obvious facts.”
For these reasons, GOP officials have been quietly conducting their own surveys to gain an accurate read on how key demographic groups are responding to the impeachment developments and the Republican Party’s response. Two people familiar with the effort said the National Republican Congressional Committee is currently conducting an internal poll this week related to impeachment, in addition to a national survey of registered voters conducted by the Republican National Committee from Sept. 26 to Sept. 29.
An RNC official briefed on the data said it showed that 54 percent of independent voters are against moving forward with impeachment, and that Trump gained 2 points on the ballot against a generic Democratic opponent in 2020. The margin of error for the survey was not immediately clear.
According to the same official, 62 percent of registered voters said Biden should be investigated for potential corruption during his tenure as vice president. Trump allies have repeatedly claimed that the scandal involving his phone call with Zelensky will do serious damage to Biden, a top Democratic presidential contender, simply by raising questions about his son’s overseas business dealings.
Polls that have emerged since initial reports on the issue — indicating a whistleblower came forward with concerns about Trump’s conversation with Zelensky — have underscored mixed feelings among voters toward the former vice president. For example, 42 percent of voters in the Monmouth survey said Biden “probably exerted pressure on Ukrainian officials to avoid investigating” his son during his time in office, but only 26 percent of voters in a Reuters/Ipsos poll said they believe Biden is attempting to conceal a potential scandal ahead of 2020.
“The irony is, the purpose of this call was to get information out there that would cast doubts about Joe Biden, but the fact that this all came out has actually done that for the Trump campaign,“ Murray said, adding that the polling trends he’s seen indicate that independent voters are more inclined to believe the president’s false claims about Biden than to dismiss them.
“It doesn’t seem to be hurting him in the context of the Democratic primary, but it’s something to pay attention to in the future with independent voters,” Murray said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/03/trump-impeachment-2020-voters-022503
2019-10-03 09:00:00Z
52780396614693
Iraq protests: Shots fired as demonstrators defy Baghdad curfew - BBC News
Media playback is unsupported on your device
Security forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, have fired live rounds at protesters defying a curfew.
The prime minister says the open-ended curfew - which has been in place since dawn - is needed to maintain order and protect protesters from "infiltrators".
At least 13 people have been killed since Tuesday in clashes with security forces in Baghdad and other cities.
Thousands have been taking to the streets to show their anger at the lack of jobs, poor services and corruption.
The protests, which appear to lack any organised leadership, are the largest since Adel Abdul Mahdi became prime minister a year ago.
The United Nations and the United States have expressed concern at the violence and urged the Iraqi authorities to exercise restraint.
Overnight, explosions were heard in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where government offices and foreign embassies are located.
The US-led coalition fighting the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq said none of its facilities were hit and that Iraqi security forces were investigating the blasts.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49919919
2019-10-03 09:59:17Z
52780398589425
Hong Kong student protester shot by police charged with assault - NBC News
HONG KONG — Criminal charges were filed on Thursday against the 18-year-old Hong Kong student who was shot by a police officer as pro-democracy protests hit a new level of violence this week.
Police told NBC News the student, identified as Tsang Chi-kin, was charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer as tens of thousands of black-clad protesters took to the streets of the semiautonomous territory on Tuesday.
The months-long pro-democracy protests that have gripped Hong Kong began in June in reaction to a now withdrawn extradition bill but have since morphed with calls of greater police accountability and an investigation into allegations of excessive use of force.
The shooting Tuesday happened amid one of the most violent days of the demonstrations. Marked the first time a protester was struck by live ammunition, the shooting has inflamed anger against police.
Oct. 2, 201901:15
Police officials defended the officer on Wednesday, saying his life was in imminent danger and he fired as the teen struck him with a metal rod. Queen Elizabeth hospital confirmed with NBC News that Tsang’s condition was stable after surgery and that he was recovering in the intensive care unit.
A total of 269 people, ranging from ages 12 to 71, were arrested on the day, police said. Cases began to be heard in Shantin court Thursday.
Thousands of people, including Tsang's fellow students at a Hong Kong college, rallied Wednesday to demand police accountability for the shooting.
Veta Chan reported from Hong Kong and Linda Givetash from London.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hong-kong-student-protester-shot-police-be-charged-n1061806
2019-10-03 08:48:00Z
52780399799160
Rabu, 02 Oktober 2019
Hong Kong Protests Led a Student to Activism, Then to the Point of a Gun - The New York Times
HONG KONG — He was the kind of 18-year-old high school student more interested in basketball than studying. One of four student vice presidents, who classmates say never showed an interest in politics until this year.
Friends described him as charming and funny, with long hair he sometimes kept in a ponytail. Just another student. Not an icon. Not a symbol. Not a lightning rod.
But on Tuesday, the student, Tsang Chi-kin, became all of those things when he was shot by the police during a day of violent protests in Hong Kong.
The shooting — the first time police officers in the semiautonomous Chinese territory used a live round against a demonstrator in nearly four months of protests — represented a new escalation in the violence that has roiled the city.
Mr. Tsang was shot in the chest. The hollow-point bullet narrowly missed his heart and spine, but pierced a lung. As of Wednesday, he was in intensive care but in stable condition, according to the Hospital Authority.
“He’s a very fortunate person, when you look at the organs that are there,” said Dr. Darren Mann, a Hong Kong surgeon and expert in ballistic injuries.
The teenager was one of many thousands of protesters who fanned out across Hong Kong on Tuesday and battled the police for hours through fogs of tear gas. The street brawls started just hours after Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, presided over a carefully choreographed military parade in Beijing to celebrate 70 years of Communist Party control.
The shooting, which has been replayed for hours on local television news channels, has divided the city.
Supporters of the pro-democracy protests say the episode epitomizes all that is wrong with a Hong Kong government that has prioritized brute force over genuine political dialogue. The movement’s critics, on the other hand, say the shooting highlights the shameful excesses of a youth-led movement that has increasingly resorted to vandalism and attacks on police officers.
Seven friends of Mr. Tsang discussed the young man’s activities, but insisted on anonymity because they feared retaliation by the police or others if their identities were known.
Mr. Tsang, they said, was barely aware of politics until June when the first major protests against a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland for trial convulsed the city.
The young man, they said, became more committed to the movement, regularly attending protests, participating in political discussion online and advocating for greater democracy in Hong Kong.
Starting this summer, Mr. Tsang played a leading role in a group of a dozen protesters from several high schools who attended protests together, his friends said. But a personal dispute last weekend led to a rift in the once tight-knit clique.
As a result, Mr. Tsang was with a half-dozen people at the protest on Tuesday in Tsuen Wan, a working-class neighborhood of residential tower blocks, when he was shot. Mr. Tsang and the other teenagers overlapped their open umbrellas to create a nylon wall as they charged the police, the friends said.
In a video of the shooting, brick-throwing protesters chase outnumbered police officers for about two blocks, until a small group of officers becomes separated. A protester who appears to be Mr. Tsang — wearing swim goggles and a gas mask and carrying a pool kickboard — is seen leading a handful of black-clad protesters who chase a riot officer and knock him to the ground. They kick the officer and beat him with what appear to be metal pipes.
When a different police officer approaches with a drawn handgun to rescue his colleague on the ground, the protester turns to him and strikes his trigger hand with a pipe. Instantly, the officer fires on the man at point-blank range.
The Hong Kong police commissioner, Stephen Lo, said the officer who fired on Mr. Tsang had acted in a “legal and reasonable” manner, having given a verbal warning before opening fire. The officer had been assaulted at close quarters, Mr. Lo said, and had no other choice but to shoot. “The range was not determined by the police officer, but by the perpetrator,” he said.
Mr. Lo added that the police had arrested Mr. Tsang, but had not yet decided whether to press charges. On Wednesday morning, the principal and vice principal of the Ho Chuen Yiu public secondary school said that Mr. Tsang would not be punished and would keep his place in the school.
Some supporters of the police and Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing political elites urged the school to take a harder line.
“Could you not directly denounce his wrongdoing,” Leung Chun-ying, a former Hong Kong chief executive, wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday. Before being shot, Mr. Leung wrote, Mr. Tsang had “beat the police on the streets in full gear along with other rioters.”
Joseph Cheng, a retired professor of political science at the City University of Hong Kong, said the shooting could turn Mr. Tsang into a powerful symbol for activists on either side of the protests.
In less than 24 hours after the shooting, Mr. Tsang was being hailed as a hero and derided as a thug.
“I don’t know if they were real thugs or students, but they all have been seriously brainwashed,” Junius Ho, a pro-Beijing legislator in Hong Kong, said in a video broadcast on Facebook Live.
Hundreds of people gathered in the upscale Central district at lunchtime on Wednesday. They chanted slogans and sang the protest movement’s anthem, “Glory To Hong Kong,” as a show of support for Mr. Tsang.
“They shouldn’t shoot at anybody, adults or children. But especially not at young people — it’s really important for them to have a future,” said Susanna Cheung, an office worker who joined the march during her lunch break. “The students need our support and need to know that Hong Kong people stand with them.”
Mr. Cheng, the retired political scientist, said the shooting could propel Mr. Tsang to the kind of international prominence that Joshua Wong, a leader of the city’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, achieved at a similar age.
On Wednesday, a group of protesters lionized Mr. Tsang at a news conference they held at the base of a 30-story public housing block in Tsuen Wan. It was across the street from the public high school and not far from where he was shot.
A row of masked protesters sat at tables and discussed their friendship and admiration for Mr. Tsang. One of them, a student, denounced the police and called for further protests to honor Mr. Tsang, saying, “Please promise me that you will never forgive.”
But recent alumni of the school said in interviews that the housing project was mainly occupied by older families who were strongly pro-Beijing. And not everyone who heard the protesters supported their message.
At one point during the news conference, a drone buzzed high above the apartment tower and strafed the crowd below with rotten eggs.
Elsie Chen and Ezra Cheung contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/world/asia/hong-kong-shooting-protests.html
2019-10-02 12:40:00Z
52780396822607
Hong Kong Protests Led a Student to Activism, Then to the Point of a Gun - The New York Times
HONG KONG — He was the kind of 18-year-old high school student more interested in basketball than studying. One of four student vice presidents, who classmates say never showed an interest in politics until this year.
Friends described him as charming and funny, with long hair he sometimes kept in a ponytail. Just another student. Not an icon. Not a symbol. Not a lightning rod.
But on Tuesday, the student, Tsang Chi-kin, became all of those things when he was shot by the police during a day of violent protests in Hong Kong.
The shooting — the first time police officers in the semiautonomous Chinese territory used a live round against a demonstrator in nearly four months of protests — represented a new escalation in the violence that has roiled the city.
Mr. Tsang was shot in the chest. The hollow-point bullet narrowly missed his heart and spine, but pierced a lung. As of Wednesday, he was in intensive care but in stable condition, according to the Hospital Authority.
“He’s a very fortunate person, when you look at the organs that are there,” said Dr. Darren Mann, a Hong Kong surgeon and expert in ballistic injuries.
The teenager was one of many thousands of protesters who fanned out across Hong Kong on Tuesday and battled the police for hours through fogs of tear gas. The street brawls started just hours after Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, presided over a carefully choreographed military parade in Beijing to celebrate 70 years of Communist Party control.
The shooting, which has been replayed for hours on local television news channels, has divided the city.
Supporters of the pro-democracy protests say the episode epitomizes all that is wrong with a Hong Kong government that has prioritized brute force over genuine political dialogue. The movement’s critics, on the other hand, say the shooting highlights the shameful excesses of a youth-led movement that has increasingly resorted to vandalism and attacks on police officers.
Seven friends of Mr. Tsang discussed the young man’s activities, but insisted on anonymity because they feared retaliation by the police or others if their identities were known.
Mr. Tsang, they said, was barely aware of politics until June when the first major protests against a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland for trial convulsed the city.
The young man, they said, became more committed to the movement, regularly attending protests, participating in political discussion online and advocating for greater democracy in Hong Kong.
Starting this summer, Mr. Tsang played a leading role in a group of a dozen protesters from several high schools who attended protests together, his friends said. But a personal dispute last weekend led to a rift in the once tight-knit clique.
As a result, Mr. Tsang was with a half-dozen people at the protest on Tuesday in Tsuen Wan, a working-class neighborhood of residential tower blocks, when he was shot. Mr. Tsang and the other teenagers overlapped their open umbrellas to create a nylon wall as they charged the police, the friends said.
In a video of the shooting, brick-throwing protesters chase outnumbered police officers for about two blocks, until a small group of officers becomes separated. A protester who appears to be Mr. Tsang — wearing swim goggles and a gas mask and carrying a pool kickboard — is seen leading a handful of black-clad protesters who chase a riot officer and knock him to the ground. They kick the officer and beat him with what appear to be metal pipes.
When a different police officer approaches with a drawn handgun to rescue his colleague on the ground, the protester turns to him and strikes his trigger hand with a pipe. Instantly, the officer fires on the man at point-blank range.
The Hong Kong police commissioner, Stephen Lo, said the officer who fired on Mr. Tsang had acted in a “legal and reasonable” manner, having given a verbal warning before opening fire. The officer had been assaulted at close quarters, Mr. Lo said, and had no other choice but to shoot. “The range was not determined by the police officer, but by the perpetrator,” he said.
Mr. Lo added that the police had arrested Mr. Tsang, but had not yet decided whether to press charges. On Wednesday morning, the principal and vice principal of the Ho Chuen Yiu public secondary school said that Mr. Tsang would not be punished and would keep his place in the school.
Some supporters of the police and Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing political elites urged the school to take a harder line.
“Could you not directly denounce his wrongdoing,” Leung Chun-ying, a former Hong Kong chief executive, wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday. Before being shot, Mr. Leung wrote, Mr. Tsang had “beat the police on the streets in full gear along with other rioters.”
Joseph Cheng, a retired professor of political science at the City University of Hong Kong, said the shooting could turn Mr. Tsang into a powerful symbol for activists on either side of the protests.
In less than 24 hours after the shooting, Mr. Tsang was being hailed as a hero and derided as a thug.
“I don’t know if they were real thugs or students, but they all have been seriously brainwashed,” Junius Ho, a pro-Beijing legislator in Hong Kong, said in a video broadcast on Facebook Live.
Hundreds of people gathered in the upscale Central district at lunchtime on Wednesday. They chanted slogans and sang the protest movement’s anthem, “Glory To Hong Kong,” as a show of support for Mr. Tsang.
“They shouldn’t shoot at anybody, adults or children. But especially not at young people — it’s really important for them to have a future,” said Susanna Cheung, an office worker who joined the march during her lunch break. “The students need our support and need to know that Hong Kong people stand with them.”
Mr. Cheng, the retired political scientist, said the shooting could propel Mr. Tsang to the kind of international prominence that Joshua Wong, a leader of the city’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, achieved at a similar age.
On Wednesday, a group of protesters lionized Mr. Tsang at a news conference they held at the base of a 30-story public housing block in Tsuen Wan. It was across the street from the public high school and not far from where he was shot.
A row of masked protesters sat at tables and discussed their friendship and admiration for Mr. Tsang. One of them, a student, denounced the police and called for further protests to honor Mr. Tsang, saying, “Please promise me that you will never forgive.”
But recent alumni of the school said in interviews that the housing project was mainly occupied by older families who were strongly pro-Beijing. And not everyone who heard the protesters supported their message.
At one point during the news conference, a drone buzzed high above the apartment tower and strafed the crowd below with rotten eggs.
Elsie Chen and Ezra Cheung contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/world/asia/hong-kong-shooting-protests.html
2019-10-02 12:29:00Z
52780399491161
Trump impeachment inquiry latest updates: Impeachment inquiry turns to State Department — live updates - CBS News
Key facts and latest news
- The State Department inspector general will brief congressional committee staff about unspecified documents on Wednesday.
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to House committees scheduling depositions from State Department officials, calling it an attempt to "bully" diplomats.
- House committee chairs warned Pompeo not to obstruct the impeachment inquiry.
- Pompeo confirmed that he was on a July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky where Trump urged Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
- Soon after the call, White House officials moved a record of the call to a highly classified computer system, severely restricting who could access it.
Washington -- House Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry into President Trump are maintaining pressure on the State Department, warning Secretary of State Mike Pompeo against obstructing their probe.
On Tuesday, Pompeo accused Democrats of trying to "bully" and "intimidate" State Department officials by scheduling depositions about their involvement with President Trump's call with the Ukrainian president on short notice.
"I am concerned with aspects of your request, described more fully below, that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career Foreign Service Officers," Pompeo wrote to the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Pompeo was revealed to have been on the call between Mr. Trump and the Ukrainian president, a development first reported by The Wall Street Journal. That development prompted the chairmen of three committees to warn Pompeo he would be considered a "fact witness" and should play no role in dictating investigators' access to witnesses or documents.
"He should immediately cease intimidating Department witnesses in order to protect himself and the President," they said in a statement.
The clash comes ahead of a hastily scheduled mysterious briefing requested by the State Department's inspector general, who requested a meeting to review unspecified documents with staffers of relevant congressional committees on Wednesday afternoon. -- Stefan Becket
Pompeo confirms he was on call between Trump and Zelesnky
7:25 a.m. Addressing reporters in Rome during an overseas visit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that he was on the July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky.
"I was on the phone call," he told the press. "I know precisely what the American policy has been with respect to Ukraine. It's been remarkably consistent, and we will continue to drive those sets of outcomes," he added.
The secretary neglected to answer questions on whether or not he had heard anything on the call that had raised any red flags, but said the call was about helping Ukraine get corruption of their government and "taking down the threat that Russia poses to Ukraine."
He said that effort will continue "even while all this noise in Washington is going on."
On the outstanding depositions for State Department officials to come before Congress, Pompeo argued that congressional committees had said State wouldn't be able to be present to protect information.
"What we objected to was the demands that were put...deeply violating fundamental principles of separation of powers. They contacted state department employees directly. Told them not to contact legal counsel in the State Department. They said that the State Department wouldn't be able to be present. There are important constitutional prerogatives that the executive branch has to be present so that we can protect important information so our partners, countries like Italy, can have confidence that the information they provide to the state department will continue to be protected," Pompeo explained.
He added of his stern letter to committee chairs: "So the response that I provided to them was one that acknowledged that we will of course do our Constitutional duty to cooperate with this co-equal branch but we are going to do so in a way that is consistent with the fundamental values of the American system."
"We won't tolerate folks on Capitol Hill bullying and intimidating state dept employees, that's unacceptable and its not something that I'm going to permit to happen," Pompeo urged.
- Emily Tillett
Australia's PM downplays call with Trump
6:40 a.m. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison downplayed his phone call with President Trump over the Russian interference probe, saying the conversation was not "ladled with pressure."
In an interview with Sky News, Morrison said Mr. Trump contacted him to ask "for a point of contact" for Attorney General William Barr's investigation into what triggered the FBI's Russia probe.
"A couple of weeks ago the president contacted me and asked for a point of contact between the Australian government and the U.S. attorney, which I was happy to do on the basis that was something we'd already committed to do," he said.
"It was a fairly uneventful conversation," Morrison defended, later calling the conversation "brief" and a "fairly polite request."
Barr had asked Mr. Trump to call Morrison to alert him that the attorney general would be reaching out, a department official previously told CBS News. The New York Times first reported the two leaders had spoken. Morrison was just one of several foreign officials Barr had sought out for assistance in the Department of Justice's review of the origins of the Mueller probe.
-- Emily Tillett
Giuliani threatens lawsuit against members of Congress
6:00 a.m. During his most recent appearance on Fox News, President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said he's considering filing a lawsuit against individual congress members for violating his, the president's, and possibly the administration's civil and constitutional rights.
Although Giuliani only specifically cited House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff as a potential target, he says that Congress has "violated" the president's ability to perform Article 2 of the Constitution and violated Giuliani's attorney-client privilege.
In terms of his subpoena, Giuliani says he does not regret revealing on national television the text messages he has with Ukrainian officials and the state department. He admitted that he has "many more," however, Giuliani also said that turning them over was a "complicated" issue because they're all his "work product" as an attorney.
State Department inspector general to brief committee staff on Ukraine docs
Tuesday, 6:03 p.m.: The State Department's internal watchdog invited congressional committee staff to attend a briefing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday "to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine."
Inspector General Steve Linick invited Democratic and Republican staffers from eight House and Senate committees to attend the briefing. A copy of the invitation seen by CBS News was designated "urgent," and said the inspector general "obtained the documents from the Acting Legal Advisor of the Department of State."
Several senior congressional aides from the committees said they don't know what is in the documents and that the invitation came as a surprise to them.
"It could be anything," one aide said. -- Nancy Cordes
House Intel says ex-Ukraine envoy will testify as planned
4:50 p.m.: The special envoy to Ukraine who abruptly resigned his post after his apparent entanglement with Rudy Giuliani came to light will appear as scheduled for a deposition before House lawmakers on Thursday, a House Intelligence Committee official said.
Kurt Volker resigned Friday amid scrutiny over his supposed role in facilitating contacts between Giuliani and various Ukrainian officials. He was scheduled to appear before the House committees leading the impeachment probe on Thursday and will appear behind closed doors as planned, the official said.
The official said former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will now appear on October 11, under an agreement reached with her counsel. She was previously scheduled to appear on Wednesday.
Both officials are among the five included in Pompeo's earlier letter to the committees protesting the demand for their testimony. -- Olivia Gazis and Stefan Becket
House chairmen accuse Pompeo of witness intimidation
2:32 p.m.: The chairmen of three House committees demanding documents from Pompeo and depositions of State Department officials responded to the secretary's letter Tuesday afternoon, accusing him of obstructing their investigation.
"Secretary Pompeo was reportedly on the call when the President pressed Ukraine to smear his political opponent. If true, Secretary Pompeo is now a fact witness in the House impeachment inquiry," the chairmen wrote. "He should immediately cease intimidating Department witnesses in order to protect himself and the President."
The letter came from the chairmen of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Intelligence Committee and Oversight and Reform Committee -- Eliot Engel, Adam Schiff and Elijah Cummings, respectively.
"Any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress -- including State Department employees -- is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry," the lawmakers continued. "In response, Congress may infer from this obstruction that any withheld documents and testimony would reveal information that corroborates the whistleblower complaint."
The chairmen said they are "committed to protecting witnesses from harassment and intimidation, and we expect their full compliance and that of the Department of State." -- Stefan Becket
Pompeo responds to Democrats' demand for depositions
10:51 a.m.: In a letter to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Democrats of trying to "intimidate" and "bully" State Department officials with a request for testimony about their involvement in the Ukraine call. Pompeo said the committee's request does not provide enough time for the department and its employees to adequately prepare.
Pompeo, who is traveling in Italy, wrote that the request "can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career Foreign Service Officers."
He added, "Let me be clear: I will not tolerate such tactics, and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State."
On Friday, three committee chairs wrote to Pompeo informing him they had scheduled depositions for five officials: former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, former special envoy Kurt Volker, Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl and U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland. All five officials were mentioned in the whistleblower complaint.
Volker resigned abruptly from his post as special envoy for Ukraine on Friday and is scheduled to be deposed on Thursday.
The chairmen also issued a subpoena for documents from Pompeo related to the call. -- Emily Tillett
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/trump-impeachment-inquiry-latest-updates-today-2019-10-02/
2019-10-02 11:36:00Z
52780396614693
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