Trump impeachment news: Congress begins drawing up charges, as president hits back at former FBI lawyer before heading to UK for Nato summit
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump began his week avidly tweeting along to Fox News before jetting out for a Nato summit in London, as the House impeachment report into his dealings with Ukraine are set to be unveiled to members of Congress in advance of the Judiciary Committee staging its first hearing of the inquiry on Wednesday.
The White House yesterday declined to be part of the midweek session, with lawyer Pat Cipollone branding the process a “baseless and highly partisan” attack on the president in a letter to Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler.
Republicans continued to defend Mr Trump on the Sunday talk shows, with the ranking GOP representative on the committee Doug Collins calling on inquiry figurehead Adam Schiff to testify and accusing him of “hiding behind the report”.
As he departed the White House for London, Mr Trump called the trip “one of the most important journeys that we make as president” and said Democrats had long known about it.
His trip to the UK comes amid ongoing quarrels over defence spending by NATO allies and widespread anxiety over the president’s commitment to the alliance.
The president said his trip would be focused on “fighting for the American people". But in the more than two months that the impeachment inquiry has been underway, he has constantly drifted back to what he frames as the Democrats’ unfair effort to overturn the results of his 2016 election.
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday on the constitutional grounds for impeachment before Mr Trump wraps up at the NATO summit.
Mr Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Mr Cipollone and presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway all complained about the timing, with Mr Pompeo saying the hearings would “distract America's president from his important mission overseas.”
Mr Trump insists he’s solely focused on scoring domestic and foreign policy wins, including revamping NATO so that allies spend more on defense. But he’s often appeared consumed by the day-to-day battle against impeachment.
In recent days he’s repeatedly lashed out about the “impeachment hoax” and the “scam” inquiry, even delving into impeachment at a ceremony to celebrate NCAA athletes and at last week’s annual Turkey pardon.
White House aides say the summit offers Mr Trump an opportunity to counter the impeachment narrative in Washington and demonstrate to voters that he’s keeping a business-as-usual approach while Democrats concentrate on the probe.
But soon after Air Force One departed, Mr Trump took to Twitter to slam “Do Nothing Democrats” for scheduling the hearing during the NATO meeting as “Not nice!””
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in Madrid for a UN conference on climate change, declined to comment about the impeachment inquiry, saying, “When we travel abroad, we don't talk about the president in a negative way. We save that for home.”
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
Donald Trump is now claiming on Twitter that the GOP "has NEVER been so united" in spite of the impeachment proceedings against him -
↵Donald Trump has tweeted about ex-FBI official Lisa Page after she broke her nearly two-year public silence about the Mueller investigation and her involvement in the scandal that clouded the first years of his presidency -
Here's the full statement from Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign about its decision not to credential reporters associated with Michael Bloomberg's publication, Bloomberg:
ICYMI: Newsweek has terminated a reporter after an article the site published incorrectly said Donald Trump was only golfing in Florida during Thanksgiving. The Independent's Dave Maclean has more:
Donald Trump is tweeting about NATO before his upcoming meetings with the global alliance -
Donald Trump is tweeting a series of headlines that seem to suggest Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected any claims that there was a quid pro quo surrounding US-Ukraine relations.
What Mr Zelensky in fact was saying was that he did not want Ukraine to look like "beggars" during their negotiations with the US and that sending crucial military aid was about "fairness" rather than a quid pro quo -
Ms Page also defended herself from allegations she violated the Hatch Act by expressing her political viewpoints in text messages to a colleague — an act that does not violate the law.
“I don’t engage in any sort of partisan politicking at all” she said. “But having an opinion and sharing that opinion publicly or privately with another person is squarely within the permissible bounds of the Hatch Act.”
George Conway, a prominent Washington lawyer and husband to Donald Trump's senior White House adviser, Kellyanne Conway, has just quote-tweeted his wife while deriding the president:
Donald Trump has attacked former FBI lawyer Lisa Page after she broke her nearly two-year public silence following the release of text messages between her and a former agent that were critical of the president.
"When Lisa Page, the lover of Peter Strzok, talks about being 'crushed', and how innocent she is, ask her to read Peter’s 'Insurance Policy' text, to her, just in case Hillary loses", the president wrote on Twitter. "Also, why were the lovers text messages scrubbed after he left Mueller."
He added: "Where are they Lisa?"
Mr Trump has long claimed the text messages between Ms Page and Peter Strzok were evidence of political bias in the bureau's investigations into interference in the 2016 election. The former FBI lawyer testified in a closed-door hearing to House investigators in July of last year.
Ms Page detailed her experience being thrust into the national spotlight following the release of her texts and revelations about her relationship with Mr Strzok in a Daily Beast interview published on Monday.
The Trump administration has quietly released more than $100m (£77.2m) in military assistance to Lebanon after months of unexplained delay that led some lawmakers to compare it to the aid for Ukraine at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
The Foreign Military Financing funds for the Lebanese Armed Forces was released just before the Thanksgiving holiday and lawmakers were notified of the step on Monday, according to two congressional staffers and an administration official.
All three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the matter.
The money had languished in limbo at the Office of Management and Budget since September although it had already won congressional approval and had overwhelming support from the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council. The White House has yet to offer any explanation for the delay despite repeated queries from Congress.
AP
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