U.S. ambassadors pushed Ukraine to investigate as condition for White House visit, texts show - NBC News

WASHINGTON — Text messages given to Congress show U.S. ambassadors working to persuade Ukraine to publicly commit to investigating President Donald Trump’s political opponents and explicitly linking the inquiry to whether Ukraine’s president would be granted an official White House visit.

The two ambassadors, both Trump picks, went as far as to draft language for what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should say, the texts indicate. The messages released Thursday by House Democrats conducting an impeachment inquiry show the ambassadors coordinating with both Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a top Zelenskiy aide.

“Heard from White House – assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for a visit to Washington,” former U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations Kurt Volker wrote the top Zelenskiy aide on July 25, just before Trump spoke by phone to Zelenskiy. That phone call led a U.S. intelligence official to file a whistleblower complaint that set off a cascade of fast-moving events, ultimately leading to an impeachment inquiry into the president.

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Volker resigned amid the tumult. He was deposed Thursday at the Capitol, where he turned over text messages that offer the fullest picture to date of how top diplomats and Giuliani sought to advance Trump’s goal of getting the Ukrainians to investigate both meddling in the 2016 election and Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Volker and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland — both political appointees — repeatedly stressed the need to get the Ukrainians to agree to the exact language that Zelenskiy would use in announcing an investigation, the texts indicate. In August, Volker proposed to Sondland that they give Zelenskiy a statement to utter at a news conference citing “alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians” in interference in U.S. elections.

“We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections,” Volker and Sondland agreed that the Ukrainian president should say. Zelenskiy never did make the statement.

Burisma Holdings is a Ukrainian gas company whose board Hunter Biden joined in 2014, while his father was vice president and handling the Ukraine portfolio. Trump has made unsubstantiated allegations that the arrangement was corrupt. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden. The president has also long promoted the baseless theory that Ukraine — not Russia — was responsible for 2016 election meddling.

The texts also show a panicky top aide to Zelenskiy reaching out to Volker after the president unexpectedly halted roughly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine, as he increased pressure on Zelenskiy to investigate. On August 29, Zelenskiy aide Andrey Yermak texted Volker: “Need to talk with you.”

The efforts by Volker and Sondland to facilitate Trump’s and Giuliani’s goal of getting the Ukrainians to probe the president’s political rivals are at odds with the account in the whistleblower complaint, which the Trump administration released to Congress under pressure last week.

Although it was Volker who initially put Giuliani in touch with Yermak, the top Zelenskiy aide, the whistleblower complaint said multiple U.S. officials had been “deeply concerned” about Giuliani’s interference in U.S.-Ukraine relations. The whistleblower reported that the officials had said both Volker and Sondland “had spoken with Mr. Giuliani in an attempt to ‘contain the damage’ to U.S. national security.”

But the text messages show Volker and Sondland playing an active role in advancing Trump’s goal of forcing a Ukrainian investigation, which Democrats argue was an abuse of power by the president to advance his political interests ahead of his re-election bid.

In fact, the only U.S. official included in the text messages who pushes back is a career diplomat, William Taylor, who became the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine after Trump pulled Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch out of her post earlier this year. Yovanovitch’s ouster has become another topic of key interest to Democratic lawmakers in their impeachment inquiry.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Taylor wrote, using an acronym for the White House, after Trump canceled a planned meeting with Zelenskiy in Poland. A week later, he told Sondland: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Sondland, several hours later, pushed back, telling Taylor that Trump “has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind.” He suggests they stop discussing the matter via text message.

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House Democrats released the texts after deposing Volker for more than eight hours behind closed doors, in which Volker provided “further evidence that there was a shadow shakedown going on,” according to Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who attended the deposition. The House committees said the texts were just a subset of more materials they hope to make public.

Sondland and Volker have not responded to requests for comment. The State Department did not comment on the text messages or Volker’s deposition.

“The whole investigation is crumbling,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Thursday for a trip to Florida. He said his phone call with Zelenskiy had been “absolutely perfect.”

The new details on how Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine unfolded came as the president called for another foreign country — China — to probe his top political opponent. This time, he did it in public. Trump’s statement that “China should start an investigation into the Bidens” came as the president is engaged in a high-stakes trade war with China and added further fuel to Democrats’ impeachment push.

“This is not normal or acceptable. It is unethical, unpatriotic and wrong,” the Democratic chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees wrote in a letter accompanying the text messages. “Engaging in these stunning abuses in broad daylight does not absolve President Trump of his wrongdoings — or his grave offenses against the Constitution.”

Josh Lederman

Josh Lederman is a national political reporter for NBC News.

Rebecca Shabad and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/u-s-ambassadors-pushed-ukraine-investigate-condition-white-house-visit-n1062306

2019-10-04 07:58:00Z
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Hong Kong introduces emergency powers to ban face masks at protests - NBC News

Hong Kong will ban face masks at public demonstrations as part of emergency powers announced Friday, as sometimes violent pro-democracy protests continue in the semiautonomous territory.

Carrie Lam, the city's Beijing-backed leader, told a press conference that the the ban on face masks, which are worn by many protesters to hide their identities, would come into effect at midnight local time.

Before the new rule was confirmed, protests against it began across the Asian financial hub, with hundreds of office workers wearing masks gathering to march.

Many people in Hong Kong wear masks on a daily basis to protect themselves from colds and flu, and it was not clear how the government planned to enforce the ban.

"After so many months the government has refused to answer our demands," said one protester, who asked to be identified as just Chan, at a demonstration in the city's Central district.

A protester wears a gas mask and holds up his hand to represent the five demands in Hong Kong on Friday.Vincent Thian / AP

"Police brutality is becoming more serious and the set up of an anti-mask law is to threaten us from protesting," said the 27-year-old financial industry worker.

Prominent activist Joshua Wong tweeted that Friday's announcement could lead to further powers, such as arbitrary arrest.

1/ It is no less harmful than the extradition bill as virtually the law gives CE mighty power to impose whatever she & Beijing like to — more arbitrary arrest and search, extending dention to 96 hours or more, banning internet access, de facto martial laws are highly expected.

— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 (@joshuawongcf) October 4, 2019

Anti-government protests have gripped the former British colony for months, plunging it into its biggest political crisis in decades and posing a popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The protesters are angry about what they see as creeping interference by Beijing in their city's affairs despite a promise of autonomy in the "one country, two systems" formula under which Hong Kong returned to China in 1997.

China dismisses accusations it is meddling and has accused foreign governments, including the United States and Britain, of stirring up anti-China sentiment.

What began as opposition to a proposed extradition law, which that could have seen people sent for trial in mainland courts but has now been shelved, has grown into a call for five demands, including universal suffrage and an inquiry into alleged police brutality.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam attends a news conference to discuss sweeping emergency laws at government office in Hong Kong on Friday.ATHIT PERAWONGMETHA / Reuters

Protesters, some wearing gas masks and helmets, marched past some of the city's most expensive real estate including British bank HSBC's head office, on Friday, calling out for "five demands, not one less".

The protests have been inflamed by the police shooting of a teenaged secondary school student on Tuesday during a clash, and more rallies are expected later in the evening and over the weekend.

Police said the officer involved in the shooting acted in self-defense because his life was under threat. The teenager, the first protester hit by live fire during months of unrest, remains in hospital in a stable condition.

Riot police moved in to districts across Hong Kong overnight, firing tear gas at a chanting crowd in a residential area, while rail operator MTR Corp shut several stations as violence escalated.

Patrick Smith

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter from NBC News Digital.

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2019-10-04 07:22:00Z
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Paris police attack: Four killed by knife-wielding man - BBC News

A knife-wielding man has killed four staff at central police headquarters in Paris, French media report.

The attacker, who has not been named but is also said to be a member of staff, was later shot dead by police.

There has been no official statement so far. The area in the île de la Cité - in the centre of Paris - has been sealed off.

The attack comes a day after police went on strike across France over increasing violence towards officers.

It happened at about 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT; 12:00 BST) in the courtyard of the building.

President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and Interior Minister Christophe Castaner have all gone to the site.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo confirmed on Twitter that "several people" had been killed in the attack, which took place near major tourist sites including the Notre-Dame cathedral.

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Another person was also reportedly wounded.

According to French media, the attacker was a 45-year-old man who had worked in an administrative capacity for the Paris police force for 20 years.

They said he had been working in the police force's intelligence division.

French broadcaster BFMTV reports that he stabbed two people inside two offices, one person on a stairway and the fourth person inside the building's courtyard - where the knifeman was shot dead.

"Police were running around in panic," an eyewitness who was inside the courtyard at the time of the attack told Le Parisien newspaper.

"I was surprised to hear shooting because this is not a place where you hear that kind of thing. I first thought it was a suicide because there are a lot of those at the moment," he added.

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2019-10-03 13:18:27Z
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Hong Kong Takes Symbolic Stand Against China’s High-Tech Controls - The New York Times

HONG KONG — There’s no sign to mark it. But when travelers from Hong Kong cross into Shenzhen in mainland China, they reach a digital cut-off point.

On the Hong Kong side, the internet is open and unfettered. On the China side, connections wither behind filters and censors that block foreign websites and scrub social media posts. The walk is short, but the virtual divide is huge.

This invisible but stark technological wall has loomed as Hong Kong’s protests smolder into their fourth month. The semiautonomous city’s proximity to a society that is increasingly closed off and controlled by technology has informed protesters’ concerns about Hong Kong’s future. For many, one fear is the city will fall into a shadow world of surveillance, censorship and digital controls that many have had firsthand experience with during regular travels to China.

The protests are a rare rebellion against Beijing’s vision of tech-backed authoritarianism. Unsurprisingly, they come from the only major place in China that sits outside its censorship and surveillance.

The symbols of revolt are rife. Umbrellas, which became an emblem of protests in Hong Kong five years ago when they were used to deflect pepper spray, are now commonly deployed to shield protester activities — and sometimes violence — from the digital eyes of cameras and smartphones. In late July, protesters painted black the lenses of cameras in front of Beijing’s liaison office in the city.

Since then, Hong Kong protesters have smashed cameras to bits. In the subway, cameras are frequently covered in clear plastic wrapping, an attempt to protect a hardware now hunted. In August, protesters pulled down a smart lamppost out of fear it was equipped with artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance software. (Most likely it was not.) The moment showed how at times the protests in Hong Kong are responding not to the realities on the ground, but fears of what could happen under stronger controls by Beijing.

This week, as protesters confronted the police in some of the most intense clashes since the unrest began in June, umbrellas were opened to block the view of police helicopters flying overhead. Some people got creative, handing out reflective mylar to stick on goggles to make them harder to film.

“Before, Hong Kong wouldn’t be using cameras to surveil citizens. To destroy the cameras and the lampposts is a symbolic way to protest,” said Stephanie Cheung, a 20-year-old university student and protester who stood nearby as others bashed the lens out of a dome camera at a subway stop last month. “We are saying we don’t need this surveillance.”

“Hong Kong, step by step, is walking the road to becoming China,” she said.

Hong Kong’s situation shows how China’s approach to technology has created new barriers to its goals, even as it has helped ensure the Communist Party’s grip on power.

In building a sprawling censorship and surveillance apparatus, China has separated itself from broader global norms. Most people — including in Hong Kong — still live in a world that looks technologically more like the United States than China, where services like Facebook, Google and Twitter are blocked. With much of culture and entertainment happening on smartphones, China faces the challenge of asking Hong Kong citizens to give up their main way of digital life.

Image

Protesters pulling down a smart lamppost during an anti-government rally in August.CreditAnthony Kwan/Getty Images

In the mainland, President Xi Jinping has strengthened an already muscular tech-powered censorship and surveillance system.

The government has spent billions to knit together sprawling networks that pull from facial-recognition and phone-tracking systems. Government apps are used to check phones, register people and enforce discipline within the Chinese Communist Party. The internet police have been empowered to question the outspoken and the small, but significant, numbers of people who use software to circumvent the internet filters and get on sites like Twitter.

“One country, two systems” — the shorthand to describe China’s and Hong Kong’s separate governance structures — has brought with it one country, two internets.

Undoing that is an ask that is too large for many. Apps like the Chinese messaging service WeChat, which some in Hong Kong use, in part to connect to people across the border, have garnered suspicion. Gum Cheung, 43, an artist and curator who travels to China for work, said he abandoned WeChat last year after he noticed some messages he sent to friends were not getting through.

“We have to take the initiative to hold the line. The whole internet of mainland China is under government surveillance,” he said.

The Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to a faxed request for comment about the impact of internet censorship. The Hong Kong police did not respond to questions about their use of surveillance during the protests.

Beijing’s approach has sometimes encouraged the fears. In recent months, playing to a push from China’s government, Hong Kong’s airline carrier Cathay Pacific scrutinized the communications of its employees to ensure they do not participate in the protests. Twitter and Facebook took down accounts in what they said was an information campaign out of China to change political opinions in Hong Kong.

The debate over why, how, and who watches who has at times descended into a self-serving back-and-forth between the police and protesters.

The Hong Kong police have arrested people based on their digital communications and ripped phones out of the hands of unwitting targets to gain access to their electronics. Sites have also been set up to try to identify protesters based on their social media accounts. More recently, the police have requested data on bus passengers to pinpoint escaping protesters.

Protesters have called for the police to release footage showing what they alleged were abuses at Hong Kong’s Prince Edward subway station in Kowloon in August. Hong Kong’s subway operator fired back, pointing out that cameras that might have gotten the footage were destroyed by protesters. Other than a few screenshots, they have not released footage.

“Trust in institutions is what separates Hong Kong from China,” said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The fast-eroding trust in the government and law enforcement, and concurrently the growing fear and paranoia about government surveillance, is what makes Hong Kong society more and more like China’s.”

Privacy concerns on both sides have driven efforts to maintain real-life anonymity. Police officers have stopped wearing badges with names or numbers. Protesters have covered their faces with masks. Both sides are carrying out increasingly sophisticated attempts to identify the other online.

Each even has a matching, if often ineffective, countermeasure to video surveillance. Protesters shine laser pointers at lenses of police cameras to help hide themselves. Police officers have strobing lights attached to their uniforms that can make it hard to capture their images.

“Of course we’re worried about the cameras,” said Tom Lau, 21, a college student. “If we lose, the cameras recorded what we’ve done, and they can bide their time and settle the score whenever they want.”

“We still have decades in front of us,” he said. “There will be a record. Even if we don’t want to work for the government, what if big companies won’t hire us?”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/technology/hong-kong-china-tech-surveillance.html

2019-10-03 11:11:00Z
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Trump officials plead ignorance to cover for Trump - Washington Post

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2019-10-03 10:18:14Z
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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.

Story Continued Below

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.”

2020 elections

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.

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2019-10-03 09:00:00Z
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Iraq protests: Shots fired as demonstrators defy Baghdad curfew - BBC News

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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.

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2019-10-03 09:59:17Z
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