The resolution, set to come before the full House on Thursday, would empower Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to take the lead on public hearings. It would also enable House Republicans for the first time to make requests before Schiff’s committee for testimony and documents — a practice that matches the minority-party powers in the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Blah blah blah...

After the White House cut off military aid to Ukraine, Donald Trump’s top officials scrambled to get it restored but were unable to organise a meeting with the president, in part because his staff were too busy pursuing his interest in buying Greenland, according to newly released congressional testimony.

The acting US ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, told Congress that Trump’s order in mid-July to cut off security assistance triggered a series of high-level meetings with cabinet members on how to get it resumed, given the urgency of the Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

Taylor testified on 22 October, but the House committees holding impeachment hearings released a full transcript on Wednesday. The veteran ambassador told congressional investigators it was the “unanimous opinion of every level of inter-agency discussion” that the aid should be restored and that the secretaries of state and defence as well as the CIA director and the national security adviser work together to arrange an urgent meeting with Trump “to convince him to release the hold”.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/07/ukraine-crisis-put-on-ice-...

Read from top. See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/37269

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Meanwhile:

While the identity of the whistleblower who complained about Donald Trump’s alleged abuse of power during a phone call with the Ukrainian president on 25 July, prompting an impeachment probe against the US president remains unknown to the public, Trump and other prominent Republicans continue to call for his name to be revealed.

1. Whistleblower’s Identity Known
2. Could the Whistleblower’s Complaint Be Impartial?
3. Biden Family’s Activity in Ukraine

Republican Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul said on Tuesday that he “probably will” disclose the name of an anonymous whistleblower whose complaint led to an ongoing impeachment inquiry against US President Donald Trump, following his telephone conversation with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, The Hill reported.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201911061077236578-will-the-real-slim-shady-p...

If I was not so dumb, I'd think that Trump deliberately made this so-called "threatening" phone call — from which no follow up was made (Ukraine's President still saw Trump, the armament was sent BUT the whole world knows about Biden's fiddles (possibly double dipping) in Ukraine and in China) — to oust a "traitor" in his administration... Many second fiddles are coming out of the woodworks with low grade hearsay, except the nasty little worm the name of whom will come out soon or later. The Democrats have bought the whole thing, hook, line and sinker... But I am more deviously intelligent than this impossible charade. Trump throws pebbles in the pond of the swamp and the monster in the swamp is not happy... 

“We have another transcript coming out which is very important,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before leaving for Alabama and a college football game. “I will give you a second transcript, because I had two calls with the president of Ukraine.”

The impeachment inquiry centres on a 25 July call between Trump and Zelenskiy in which, according to an incomplete memo released by the White House and repeatedly and incorrectly referred to by Trump as a “perfect” transcript, the US president asked his Ukrainian counterpart to “do us a favour”.

Testimony released this week has painted a damning picture of attempts to persuade Ukraine to investigate former vice-president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, potentially in return for an unfreezing of nearly $400m in military aid and a White House meeting with Trump.

The 25 July call and concerns over its content became known when an intelligence official filed an anonymous report. Trump and allies such as the Kentucky senator Rand Paul have led Republican pressure for the media to name the whistleblower, contrary to federal law.

On Saturday, House Republicans said Hunter Biden and the whistleblower should be called to testify in public hearings set to begin next week.

Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, reportedly said he was “evaluating” the list but added that the inquiry “will not serve … as a vehicle [for] the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the president pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit”.

Trump said his new “transcript” would probably be released on Tuesday. He also characterised the impeachment inquiry as “a lot of witch-hunt” but said Republicans defending him “have never been so united”.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/09/mick-mulvaney-trump-impe...

Read from top. Shiff has no choice but to let an investigation into the Bidens as part of the impeachment process, whether he likes it or not. Shiff would have to know that genuinely investigating the Bidens will sink both the impeachment inquiry and the chances of Biden becoming President... Trump the fool is playing the Dems for fools...

Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has claimed former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and former White House chief of staff John Kelly tried to recruit her to work around Donald Trump in an effort to “save the country”.

Haley, who left the administration last year, makes the claim in a book, With All Due Respect, that will be published on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported.

In Haley’s telling, Tillerson told her that if Trump was left unchecked, people would die.

“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” Haley writes.

The pair told her that “it was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America” and “the president didn’t know what he was doing”.

Haley’s claims add to a picture of the White House as a hive of insurrection, with former business leaders, diplomats, career politicians and aides attempting to stymie the wilder impulses of a wildly unconventional president.

In September 2018, Watergate reporter Bob Woodward published Fear, an account of Trump’s first year in power in which senior aides were reported removing documents from the Resolute Desk. Two books by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury and Siege, have painted a similar picture of dysfunction, faction and chaos.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/10/nikki-haley-book-tillers...

Read from top.

So far. Trump has killed far FAR FAR less people than Obama, than G W Bush and even Hillary Clinton (who started the war on Libya) singularly... These characters were ODIOUS.... So despite Trump being a loony, he is not as dangerous as the others. Actually his Gemini cricket conscience is Rand Paul, a soft Republican who made sure the nasties such as Bolton and others warmongers were sidelined in Trump's mind... Nikki Haley was "a piece of work" at the United nations and to tell it straight, she has not a single leg to stand on...

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33328

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34791

Reportedly, Trump wanted Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to go on record about an investigation being launched into Hunter Biden. “Trump’s kinda sounding like a needy girlfriend right there,” Colbert said.

One explanation floated for Trump’s behaviour is that he is a businessman and this is how a businessman would deal with such a situation, which Colbert rejected. “There’s only one thing Trump cuts a cheque for,” he said. “Oh my God, did he have sex with Ukraine?”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/nov/14/stephen-colbert-trump-im...

Read from top

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OMG, the Dems are holier than Thou... Stephen Colbert is as funny as a packet of stale potato chips being opened by the person sitting next to you in a movie theatre... I don't know why but I have a feeling that the "peachment" of the idiot Trump will blow up in the face of the "ever-so-clean" smug Democrats and their comedians...

Would you trust William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a senior state department official in charge of Ukraine policy? By my own prejudices, I would not. These guys are "professional" liars, especially in regard to a country "which is the most corrupt in the world.".