'Tool of repression': Iran and regimes from Ethiopia to Venezuela limit Internet, go dark online - USA TODAY

Kim Hjelmgaard USA TODAY

Published 3:47 AM EST Nov 23, 2019

Nearly a week after Iran imposed a near-total Internet and mobile data blackout amid protests over a rise in gas prices, its connectivity to the rest of the world remains limited and reflects what researchers and activists claim, disputed by Iran, is a "tool of repression" used by regimes from Ethiopia to Venezuela.

But the shutdown in Iran, which began Nov. 17 and remains below 20% of normal levels, according to NetBlocks, a firm that tracks cybersecurity, has not only allowed officials in Tehran to exert control over information about the unrest.

It has also cut off Iranians from their friends and family abroad, seemingly strengthened the Trump administration's perception that its "maximum pressure" policy on Iran is working after Washington exited the nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions, and further obscured what's happening and who's to blame in a Middle Eastern nation whose political and economic isolation has fluctuated in the four decades since its 1979 revolution that ushered in its Islamic Republic. 

Inside Iran: America’s history in Iran leads to mix of anger, weariness

Marcin de Kaminski, a technology and human rights expert at Civil Rights Defenders, a Sweden-based civil rights watchdog, said that Internet blackouts are part of a growing trend of governments trying to shut their citizens off from the world during fraught periods. "They use it to limit freedom of expression or freedom of assembly and quite often it's connected to elections or conflict or to different forms of civil unrest. This is happening in many different contexts from Uganda to Burma (also known as Myanmar)," he said.

Ethiopia has been intermittently shutting down Internet access since a failed coup in June. Venezuela periodically blocks access to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services that require Internet or mobile data access as part of an effort to stymie political opposition and prevent the efficacy of mass protests. India shut off Kashmir's Internet access more than three months ago amid political upheaval. 

Different causes and aims: Mass protests from Iran to Hong Kong accelerate

The protests in Iran accelerated after gas prices were increased by 50% at a time when the sanctions reinstated by President Donald Trump have contributed to soaring inflation and stagnating salaries. The World Bank forecasts Iran's economy will shrink by 8.7% this year, a consequence of plummeting revenues from blocked oil exports and restrictions on its petrochemicals, metals and mining sectors. Some consumer goods and essential medicines can be hard to get.   

"When I was in Iran in March there were people standing in lines to buy government rations and subsidized meat," said Hoda Katebi, a Chicago-based Iranian American writer and community organizer who has published a book about Iran's underground fashion industry.

"Nothing's coming in. The currency is worthless," she said. 

Iran's currency has lost more than half of its value against the dollar since the Trump administration reimposed sanctions. 

Katebi spoke to USA TODAY on the sidelines of VOICES, an annual gathering for fashion industry leaders and trailblazers that takes place near Oxford, England.

At the event, Katebi appeared on a panel with Shirin and Shiva Vaqar – Iranian sisters who had traveled from Tehran to talk about their eponymous fashion label. 

"It's very hard for us, not just as emerging designers but as Iranians," said Shiva Vaqar. "We face lots of sanctions and restrictions. Sourcing fabrics, finding production houses, convincing them to make our pieces . ... We have problems sending our products outside Iran. (We don't have) FedEx, (the) banking (system) is on lockdown." Still, she said, "We try to make it."

Katebi and the Vaqar sisters, who are longtime friends, had not been able to communicate with each other ahead of the event because of Iran's Internet crackdown. Katebi said she has not been able to reach her family in Iran. 

Iran student leader: I regret 1979 attack on U.S. Embassy in Tehran 

Amir Rashidi, an Internet security specialist, said Iran has previously weighed the idea of creating different levels of access to the Internet. He pointed to a Nov. 1 interview with Hamid Fatahi, a senior official in Iran's ministry of information and communications technology, in which Fatahi discusses the possibility of partitioning access based on "social class" or "occupational needs." 

It was not immediately clear if Iran is still considering such an initiative, which could be used to suppress dissenting voices. China and Russia have either taken steps or are experimenting with ways to route Internet traffic through state-controlled channels. Iran's domestic banks, hospitals, government agencies and other major state infrastructure and services such as the police have remained connected to the Internet during the blackout, according to digital security experts and Iranians contacted by USA TODAY over the course of the last week. 

Demonstrators in Iran set fire to banks and police stations and ransacked public office buildings and blocked roads, according to rights groups. Amnesty International has said that at least 100 Iranians have been killed in the protests as security services have sought to disperse crowds by firing live ammunition.

Some Iranians have found workarounds for limited Internet access. Photos and video footage that have trickled out of Iran have appeared to corroborate the claims of violence, but Iran has dismissed Amnesty's death figures as propaganda.

"Amnesty's report is based on anti-Iranian sources and those sources are not reliable," Mohammad Farahani, the editor-in-chief of the Mizan News Agency, an official news site that covers Iran's judiciary, told USA TODAY in a direct message via social media. "People (in Iran) have the right to protest just like anywhere else but those who burn banks and stores are not protesters (they are rioters)."

Iranian authorities have sought to blame the unrest on agitators with ties to foreign governments. Iran's semi-official Fars New Agency reported that "thugs arrested during the recent riots confessed they received $60 for each place set on fire." The Fars report did not say who may have been behind the payments. 

But Sina Toossi, a researcher at the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-D.C.-based group that seeks to promote links between Americans and Iranians, said the "the Iranian government does not tolerate peaceful assembly for ordinary people to air their grievances ... If the Iran is sincere about making a distinction between protests and rioters, it should at the minimum facilitate this first step in allowing people to air their grievances publicly."

Toossi said his WhatsApp groups with family and friends in Iran that were always a "feed of pictures and messages" have, since Nov. 17, "fallen ominously silent."  

An Iranian diplomat in Europe who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue said the Internet was disconnected to ensure Iranians weren't "misinformed and bombarded with fake news."

Whither the nuke deal?: Iran starts injecting uranium gas into centrifuges

Included in this "fake news," according to Iranian officials but also many Iranians who would like closer relations with the West and don't necessarily sympathize with their government or its heavy-handed tactics, but who nevertheless object to interventions by officials in the Trump administration, is an effort to frame every protest in Iran as a sign the regime is about to be toppled in a popular uprising. 

"There's just so much more to it," said Masoud Golsorkhi, a London-based Iranian-born magazine editor who was at the VOICES event in Oxford this week. 

Still, late Thursday Trump himself tweeted that "Iran has become so unstable that the regime has shut down their entire Internet System," adding "They want ZERO transparency, thinking the world will not find out the death and tragedy that the Iranian Regime is causing!" That same day the U.S.'s top diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said he "asked the Iranian protestors to send us their videos, photos and information documenting the regime’s crackdown on protestors. The U.S. will expose and sanction the abuses." And on Friday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran’s information minister, Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, for his role in "wide-scale Internet censorship." 

Yet Toossi cautioned that "U.S. officials shouldn't conflate Iranians' expression of their legitimate grievances and anger with their own government as a welcoming of new U.S. interference in Iran’s internal affairs," the high-water mark of which was a 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that unseated Iran's democratically elected prime minister. "U.S. intervention in Iran's domestic affairs has a long, ugly history and has only made matters worse for the Iranian people and regional stability."

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2019-11-23 08:12:20Z
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After months of unrest, Hong Kong is holding a de facto referendum on protests - CNN

Hong Kong elections are traditionally peaceful, even dull, but officials have warned that, amid the heightened tensions in the city, they will not hesitate to postpone the vote or close polling stations in the instance of violence. Riot police will be stationed in "inconspicuous" locations inside every polling station, police told CNN.

After months of unrest with both sides claiming to represent the will of the majority of Hong Kongers, Sunday's vote offers the first objective test of how people in the city feel about the protests and the government.

According to the government, the protests have lost public support and a silent majority of Hong Kongers are sick and tired of the violence and chaos, and they stand behind the police in doing everything necessary to stop the unrest. According to protesters, the city is with them, no matter the cost, and the lack of mass public rallies in recent months is only due to increasing restrictions on public assembly.

This debate has been playing out for months now, with the divide widening and the conversation becoming ever more toxic. Both sides can point to evidence in their favor -- people coming out to clear streets of barricades; sympathy protests by white-collar workers -- but this week, we will finally get an answer.

Historic elections

Unlike Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) -- which is chosen by a semi-democratic web of directly elected seats, functional constituencies and closed races -- the district councils are the only official bodies in the city elected by universal suffrage; one person, one vote.

This year also represents the first time that all 452 constituencies are being contested, meaning that all registered voters, about 56% of Hong Kong's 7.4 million population, will get a say. In the past, lackluster engagement has meant pro-Beijing candidates ran unopposed in some areas, aiding their control of all 18 separate district councils.

District councils are elected on five-year terms, and largely handle local affairs. They lack much in terms of real power, serving mainly to advise the government on issues affecting their neighborhoods and the allocation of funds for local projects.

The vote has taken on an outsized importance in recent years, however, as a way of signaling wider discontent about the slow pace of political reform.

"In the past 10 years or so, the lack of progress towards universal suffrage has improved participation over the last three district council elections," said Kenneth Chan, an expert on politics and governance at Hong Kong Baptist University. Turnout in 2015 was 47%, compared to around 38% in 2007 and closer to the amount who vote in the LegCo elections, typically seen as far more important.

Chan said that it was "unprecedented that all 452 constituencies are contested," and this raises the "theoretical possibility that the anti-government block might be able to win more than half of the constituencies." Doing so would not only send a clear message to the government, it could also influence the selection of the next Chief Executive, Chan added.

The district councils choose 117 of the 1,200-member "broadly representative" committee that currently chooses the city's leader, meaning substantial gains could mean pro-democrats have more of a say in who succeeds embattled current leader, Carrie Lam, in 2022.

Five demands

At present, pro-Beijing parties control all 18 district councils, so any victory for the broader pro-democracy camp will inevitably be cast as a win for protesters.

Earlier this month, the city's number two official, Matthew Cheung, told legislators the government could not understand public anger because there were no public opinion polls available and "people could be upset about various things."

Cheung's statement not only ignores the widely respected polls that are available -- they typically show lackluster approval for the government and strong support for the protesters -- it also acts as if the established demands of the protest movement are hard to understand.

For months now, protesters have consistently stuck to the slogan "five demands, not one less."

Those five demands are: withdraw the extradition bill that kicked off the entire crisis (since achieved); launch an independent inquiry into allegations of police brutality; retract any categorization of a protest on June 12 as a "riot"; amnesty for arrested protesters; and introducing universal suffrage for how the Chief Executive and Legislative Council are elected.

While some candidates are running on fairly standard local council issues -- "eliminate illegal parking," "build an animal friendly community," "strengthen environmental conservation" -- a substantial minority, around 13%, include the phrase "five demands, not one less" in their election material.

In two districts, Sai Kung and Kowloon City, more than 25% of candidates mention the five demands, while 23% of candidates in the northern district of Yuen Long, mention another key issue, calling for an investigation into the attacks on protesters in the local subway station on July 21.

However, there is suspicion among some in the protest camp that some of the less well known pro-democracy candidates standing are not what they appear -- and instead are aiming to split the vote. To counter this, Power For Democracy, an umbrella group for pro-democracy parties, has issued a list of 397 candidates it endorses, one in all but 55 constituencies. This list has been widely shared by protesters on messaging apps and AirDropped to strangers on the subway.

In the past, the pro-Beijing camp has been far better at coordinating than opposition parties, amid accusations Chinese officials sometimes intervene to pressure candidates to drop out so as not to split the vote. This year, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the largest pro-Beijing party, is fielding 179 candidates.

Do elections matter?

Whether the message sent by voters on Sunday will be heard remains to be seen.

Almost certainly, given the mood in the city at present, both will claim foul play, despite Hong Kong's long record of free and fair elections (within the limits of the system). Some protesters were already complaining of police plans to station riot officers at polling stations, claiming it risked intimidating voters.

A big loss for pro-government parties could increase pressure on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to come up with a political solution to the ongoing crisis.

By contrast, if pro-democracy candidates fail to win a significant number of seats, Lam and the central government in Beijing could use it to justify more hardline tactics against protesters.

Of course, this assumes the vote goes ahead at all. The big question hanging over Sunday is whether officials will suspend polling or postpone the elections entirely, which they have the power to do so in certain instances. Election authorities said December 1 has already been reserved as a potential backup polling date.

Uncertainty has dogged Hong Kong for months now, not least about where all this is going. Should the elections go ahead this week, at least finally some questions will be answered.

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2019-11-23 07:27:00Z
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Chinese defector gives Australia details of Beijing espionage: paper - Reuters

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An apparent Chinese intelligence service agent is seeking asylum in Australia after providing details on Beijing’s political interference in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, the Age newspaper said on Saturday.

Australia’s ties with China have deteriorated in recent years amid accusations that its most important trading partner is meddling in domestic affairs. Canberra also fears that China seeks undue influence in the Pacific region.

The defector, identified as Wang “William” Liqiang, is reported to have provided the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, or ASIO, with the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong, the paper said.

Wang also provided details of how China funds and conducts political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, the daily said.

“I have personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities,” the Age cited Wang as saying in a statement to the agency.

The ASIO declined to comment, saying only that it does not comment on operational matters or individuals.

Australia’s department of home affairs said it did not comment on individual cases.

“The purpose of protection visas is to safeguard people who cannot return to their home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution or risk of harm,” a representative said, however, adding in a statement that each case was assessed on its merits.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately return requests for a comment.

Wang may have “a legitimate claim” for asylum, said the head of Australia’s opposition Labor party, Anthony Albanese.

“But we will have appropriate briefings next week,” he was cited in a statement as saying.

In Taipei, a spokeswoman for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party said Wang’s information, as reported in the Australian media, was a reminder that China was getting involved in the self-ruled island’s presidential election next year.

“We solemnly appeal to the Taiwanese public to face up to the fact that whether it is the Chinese internet army or the Chinese government, it is using the democratic system of Taiwan to infringe upon our democracy,” the spokeswoman, Lee Yen-jong, said.

China considers Taiwan a wayward province and has never ruled out the use of force to return it to the fold.

The Age said Wang had revealed how Beijing covertly controlled listed companies to fund intelligence operations, including surveillance and profiling of dissidents and the co-opting of media organizations.

He also provided the Australian government with details of the kidnapping of a Hong Kong bookseller taken to the mainland and interrogated on suspicion of selling dissident materials, the paper added.

Additional reporting in Beijing by Catherine Cadell and in Taipei by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2019-11-23 06:06:00Z
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Trump says he might veto legislation that aims to protect human rights in Hong Kong because bill could impact China trade talks - The Washington Post

“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi [Jinping], he’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy, but we have to stand … I’d like to see them work it out, okay?” the president said. “I stand with freedom, I stand with all of the things that I want to do, but we are also in the process of making one of the largest trade deals in history. And if we could do that, it would be great.”

The House on Wednesday passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act by a vote of 417 to 1. The lone holdout was Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky. That came one day after the Senate had approved the measure on a unanimous vote.

The vetoproof majorities indicate that Congress could overrule the president if he tries to block the bill from becoming law.

“If he does veto this bill, sacrificing American values in the process, Congress should immediately and overwhelmingly override,” tweeted Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who has often backed Trump’s trade policies.

The legislation authorizes sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials involved in human rights abuses and requires the State Department to conduct an annual review of the special autonomous status that the U.S. grants Hong Kong in trade matters.

The Hong Kong bill threatens to complicate trade negotiations that already are stalled on several key issues. Chinese officials have criticized the congressional action as unwanted interference in their country’s internal affairs. Vice President Mike Pence said this week it would be “very hard” to finalize a trade deal if China resorts to violence to put down the protests, now in their sixth month.

China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, ending more than 150 years of British colonial rule. Maintaining control over the prosperous enclave, which Beijing governs under “the one-country, two-systems framework,” is a top priority for Xi.

Chinese officials would likely react sharply if the U.S. legislation becomes law. But that reaction wouldn’t necessarily imperil the trade talks, according to Jeff Moon, a former U.S. trade negotiator in the Obama administration. In the past, China has reacted to perceived slights by denying permission for U.S. Navy vessels to make port visits to Hong Kong, he noted.

“Trump’s task is to de-link Hong Kong from trade, and to help Xi find a way to express displeasure over U.S. legislation without taking precipitous action that will create indefinite deadlock in the trade war," said Moon. “The irony here is that Trump’s comments on Fox signal uncertain resolve and negotiating weakness in the trade war while talks are faltering and he needs to show determination to press China on the whole range of issues, not just agricultural products and tariffs.”

Trump last month announced an “agreement in principle” with China on a partial trade deal, which he hoped to sign by mid-November. But talks have deadlocked over the details of Chinese purchases of U.S. farm products and plans for the removal of Trump’s tariffs on $360 billion in Chinese goods.

Trump’s comments Friday come one day after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the authors of the Hong Kong legislation, predicted on CNBC that the president would sign the measure.

“My understanding is that they will sign it,” Rubio said, referring to the White House.

Trump’s public comments about Hong Kong have been inconsistent. In June, he said a resolution of the protests was between Hong Kong and China “because Hong Kong is part of China.”

Two months later, he tweeted that Xi should “humanely” deal with the situation before a trade deal was inked. “Of course China wants to make a deal. Let them work humanely with Hong Kong first!,” the president wrote.

The president has faced calls from lawmakers in both parties to speak out about what’s at stake in the Hong Kong escalating demonstrations. “The world should hear from him directly that the United States stands with these brave men and women," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week.

The president also claimed, without evidence, that he had saved the lives of thousands of Hong Kong demonstrators by telling Xi not to intervene.

“The only reason he’s not going in is because I’m saying it’s going to affect our trade deal,” Trump said.

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2019-11-22 16:20:00Z
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Impeachment hearings live updates: Trump says Democrats ‘looked like fools’ during public hearings - The Washington Post

Steve Helber AP President Trump speaks during an event at the White House on Thursday.

President Trump claimed Democrats “looked like fools” during this week’s impeachment proceedings, as he called in to Fox News for nearly an hour to weigh in on the blitz of public testimony from witnesses summoned to bolster the case that he used his office for personal gain.

Following public hearings by the House Intelligence Committee over the past two weeks, both parties are digging in as Democrats prepare to draft articles of impeachment, with a full House vote possible by the end of the year.

Democrats have been seeking to build the case that Trump sought to leverage U.S. military aid to Ukraine and a White House visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky in exchange for investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, among others.

●With a warning on Russia, blitz of public testimony in impeachment inquiry comes to an end.

●Hearings unite Democrats behind impeachment.

●White House and Republicans discuss limiting impeachment trial to two weeks.

● Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) launches probe of Bidens, Burisma and Ukraine.

What’s next in the inquiry | Who’s involved in the impeachment inquiry | Key documents related to the inquiry

8:50 AM: Trump says he knows identity of whistleblower

Trump said during the Fox News interview that he knows the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry.

“You know who the whistleblower is. So do I,” Trump told the hosts.

Trump also said he didn’t believe House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) when he recently asserted that he doesn’t know the identity of the anonymous U.S. intelligence official.

“If he doesn’t, then he’s the only person in Washington who doesn’t,” Trump said.

By: John Wagner

8:40 AM: Trump perpetuates debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in 2016 election

The intelligence community concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, but Trump continues to push the unsubstantiated claim that Ukraine worked against him.

“Ukraine hated me. They were after me in the election. They wanted Hillary Clinton to win,” the president said Friday during his Fox News interview.

His comments came a day after Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council senior director for Europe and Russia, chastised Republicans for the “fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Hill said the constant battle between Republicans and Democrats over the issue undermines the United States and its political system.

By: Donna Cassata

8:30 AM: Trump accuses embassy staffer of lying in testimony

In his Fox News interview, Trump claimed that David Holmes, a Ukrainian embassy staffer, lied during testimony on Thursday when he said he overheard a phone call between Trump and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.

Holmes testified that he was eating lunch with Sondland the day after Trump called Zelensky and asked for “a favor.” During the lunch, Sondland talked to Trump on his cellphone, and Holmes testified that Trump was talking loudly enough that he could hear him inquire about the status of “investigations.”

“How about the guy with the telephone?” Trump said during the interview. “How about that one? I guarantee you that never took place.”

Trump went on to assert that he has “good hearing” and that he can’t hear people on the other end of cellphone calls unless they are on speakerphone.

“That was a totally phony deal,” Trump said.

Trump also claimed he was not close with Sondland, a major donor whom he appointed to the position.

“This guy, Sondland, hardly know him,” Trump said.

By: John Wagner

8:20 AM: Trump resorts to name-calling in attacking Schiff, Pelosi

Trump called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “crazy as a bed bug” and labeled House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff a “sick puppy” as he railed against the fast-moving impeachment probe during the Fox News interview.

His broadside on the Democrats came a day after the end of scheduled public hearings featuring testimony from a dozen witnesses, several of whom described the president trying to coerce a foreign leader to help his reelection bid.

On Pelosi, Trump said, “She’s nuts,” adding that she will go down as the worst speaker in history.

On Schiff, the president said, “Let me tell you, he’s a sick puppy. He’s so sick. He makes it all up. He’s sick.”

Trump said he wants Schiff to testify in a Senate trial about the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the impeachment probe. Testimony and evidence have corroborated the whistleblower’s report.

During the interview, Trump said Democrats more broadly “looked like fools” during the hearings and claimed that those paying attention in Ukraine “must think we’re nuts in this country.”

Trump also lashed out at former vice president Joe Biden, a 2020 candidate, calling him “corrupt.” The president said George Conway, husband of his senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and a fierce critic of Trump, is a “whack job.”

By: Donna Cassata and John Wagner

8:15 AM: Trump escalates attack on former ambassador Yovanovitch

During his Fox News interview, Trump lashed out at former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, saying “this was not an angel, this woman.”

In his telephone interview with Fox and Friends, Trump claimed without evidence that she refused to hang his photograph in the embassy in Kyiv and said “bad things about me. She wouldn’t defend me.” He called her an “Obama person,” also with no evidence.

In her public testimony last Friday, Yovanovitch said she was fearful and appalled by the smear campaign by Trump allies that led to her being abruptly removed from her post in May. During that testimony, Trump railed against her on Twitter, a move decried by Democrats and some Republicans.

Multiple witnesses this week praised the work of Yovanovitch, a longtime diplomat, and criticized her treatment.

By: Donna Cassata

8:10 AM: Trump pushed debunked conspirary theory on DNC server

Trump continued in his Fox News interview to push a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s network in 2016 and framed Russia for the cyber intrusion.

Trump’s own advisers have dismissed the idea, which flies in the face of detailed assessments from the U.S. intelligence community, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the congressional committees that have investigated Russia’s election interference.

“They have the server,” Trump said of Ukraine. “That’s what the word is.”

One of the investigations that Trump on which Trump pressed Zelensky centered on the server.

By: John Wagner

7:45 AM: Perry predicts Trump will ‘muscle right through’ impeachment

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who declined to appear for a deposition before House investigators, predicted that Trump will “muscle right on through” the impeachment process during a portion of a television interview aired Friday.

“I don’t see the American people buying into this thing,” Perry said in a clip of a longer interview scheduled to air this weekend on Fox News.

Asked by Fox News’s Ed Henry if he thinks Trump will be removed from office, Perry said: “Lord, no, not even close.”

Removal by the Republican-led Senate would require a two-thirds vote.

Perry was among the officials known as the “three amigos” who conducted a side-channel policy on Ukraine in conjunction with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Perry declined to appear for a Nov. 6 closed-door deposition. In a statement, the Energy Department said he would “not partake in a secret star chamber inquisition where agency counsel is forbidden to be present.” The House Intelligence Committee has subsequently held two weeks of public hearings.

By: John Wagner

7:30 AM: Pelosi to appear at televised town hall as House weighs impeachment

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will take questions from voters during a televised town hall early next month as the House weighs impeaching Trump, CNN announced Friday.

The broadcast is scheduled for the night of Dec. 5 and will be moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper, the network said.

During a news conference on Thursday, Pelosi declined to say whether she has heard enough from the witnesses to make a determination on impeachment, offering only, “We will go where the facts take us.”

Pelosi said it will be up to the House committees leading the inquiry to decide on a timeline and on whether testimony from any additional witnesses is needed.

“When we see a violation of the Constitution, we have no choice but to act,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol. “And the evidence is clear that the president — the president — has used his office for his own personal gain — and in doing so, undermined the national security of the United States by withholding military assistance to Ukraine, to the benefit of the Russians.”

By: John Wagner and Felicia Sonmez

7:15 AM: Trump to weigh in on impeachment proceedings in television interview

Trump is scheduled to weigh in on the status of the impeachment proceedings during an interview at 8 a.m. on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

Steve Doocy, one of the show’s hosts, said Trump would call into the show from the White House. Ainsley Earhardt, another of the show’s hosts, said the interview is expected to last at least 40 minutes.

“I know that there’s not much to talk about, but we will try to keep the conversation going,” Trump said sarcastically in a tweet before his appearance, adding: “Enjoy!”

The only public event Trump has on his schedule Friday is a White House celebration of several NCAA national championship teams. That is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.

By: John Wagner

7:00 AM: Two more transcripts of closed-door depositions to be released

Though the public hearings are over — at least for now — House investigators could release transcripts as early as Friday of two closed-door depositions taken as part of the impeachment inquiry.

Still outstanding are the transcripts of depositions taken of Mark Sandy, an Office of Management and Budget official, and Philip Reeker, the diplomat in charge of U.S. policy for Europe.

Sandy testified earlier this month that the White House decision to freeze nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in mid-July was highly irregular and that senior political appointees in the OMB were unable to provide an explanation for the delay.

Sandy, the deputy associate director for national security programs at OMB, testified that he was instructed to sign the first of several apportionment letters in which budget officials formally instituted the freeze on funds, according to two people familiar with his testimony who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly.

Reeker said during his deposition that he appealed to top State Department leaders to publicly support Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was the target of a conspiracy theory-fueled smear campaign, a person familiar with his testimony said.

Reeker expressed his concerns over the falsehoods about Yovanovitch to David Hale, the third-highest-ranking official in the State Department, and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, the closest adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door proceedings.

By: John Wagner

6:00 AM: Trump shares assessments from GOP allies

Trump returned to Twitter late Thursday night to share a spate of assessments of the impeachment proceedings from Republican allies.

That included multiple tweets from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), one of Trump’s staunchest defenders on the House Intelligence Committee, who wrote in one that Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the panel’s chairman, “failed to bring ANY evidence for impeaching @realDonaldTrump.”

Trump also shared a promotion of T-shirts being sold by his campaign on which the word “BULL-” appears in front of a picture of Schiff.

By: John Wagner

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2019-11-22 14:22:00Z
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What comes next in the Trump impeachment inquiry? - CBS This Morning

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2019-11-22 12:29:10Z
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Officials handed the House a pile of evidence for impeachment - NBC News

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump presented little in the way of defense in the opening phase of his impeachment proceedings.

He refused to give Congress documents. He ordered subordinates to defy subpoenas. And he issued blanket proclamations of his innocence, over Twitter and in exchanges with reporters, without testifying under oath on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, as Democrats moved one step closer to a House floor vote on impeachment that they expect to hold before Christmas, a string of current and former administration officials collectively described for the House Intelligence Committee over the last two weeks how the president directed a concerted effort to aid his own re-election efforts at the expense of U.S. national security interests.

Specifically, they said he deployed several Cabinet officials, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on a mission to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce probes of former Vice President Joe Biden and a discredited theory that his own country framed Russia for interfering in the 2016 election, withholding $391 million in taxpayer dollars and a White House meeting to aid that effort.

"The question for impeachment is abuse of power," said Kim Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law who worked on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton.

"There is no Trump narrative laying out a legitimate public policy rationale for how the president, through Giuliani, treated Ukraine — by refusing a meeting and withholding aid needed to fight Russia — other than entrenching his own power."

Nov. 21, 201903:00

Trump's counter-offensive was left to Republican allies, who spent most of their time during the hearings suggesting that the president was justifiably concerned that Ukraine had framed Russia for interfering in the 2016 election to harm him and that matters involving Biden merited an investigation announcement ordered up by the president and pursued by senior executive branch officials.

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Fiona Hill, the former deputy national security adviser under Trump, testified Thursday that the idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 campaign is a "fictional narrative" that was "perpetrated and propagated" by Russia.

Republicans on the committee repeatedly noted that none of the witnesses were able to cite Trump directly conditioning aid on Ukraine opening political investigations, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that the president told him "no quid pro quo" when Sondland asked what the president wanted from Ukraine in order to free up the money in early September.

However, the White House was already aware at that point of a whistleblower complaint making its way through the intelligence community's inspector general's office and the Justice Department that alleged the president had improperly conditioned the money on the announcement of the probes.

David Holmes, a U.S. diplomat posted in Kyiv who also testified Thursday, said that former National Security Adviser John Bolton told an aide to Zelenskiy on Aug. 27 that the unfreezing of military aid was conditioned on the Ukrainian president making a favorable impression on Trump at a planned meeting in Warsaw.

"By this point, however, my clear impression was that the security assistance hold was likely intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction that the Ukrainians had not yet agreed to the Burisma/Biden investigation or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so," Holmes testified.

Ultimately, though, several of the witnesses who listened to a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy — or later read a reconstructed White House transcript of it — concluded that the president, who already had put a stop on the money, was connecting the assistance to the "favor" he asked Zelinskiy to do in looking into Biden and the election-interference issue.

"We heard Democrats lay out the elements of bribery through witnesses," Wehle said of the possibility of impeachment articles that go beyond "high crimes and misdemeanors" based on abuse of power. "And we know they are concerned about witness intimidation and obstruction of subpoenas."

Nov. 21, 201912:17

Much of that remains to be determined, though.

House officials tell NBC News that the Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for drafting articles of impeachment, is likely to take up the next stage of the process after Thanksgiving, which may include hearings of its own.

"We could have a Judiciary hearing as early as that first week after Thanksgiving," said a senior Democratic aide familiar with internal party discussions.

The process there would be relatively quick, according to a House Democratic leadership aide.

"I think they're very happy," the aide said of party leaders. "We probably would vote on it on the floor the third week of December."

They say they are satisfied that they have built the case that the president's actions merit impeachment — but have their work cut out for them in swaying 20 or more Republicans to vote to oust him.

So far, no Senate Republican has said Trump's conduct justifies removal from office.

Jonathan Allen

Jonathan Allen is a Washington-based national political reporter for NBC News who focuses on the presidency.

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2019-11-22 10:54:00Z
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