US President Donald Trump has ripped Democratic lawmakers for engaging in an impeachment inquiry, which he likened to “bulls—.”

The president unleashed an avalanche of tweets Wednesday against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as well as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Trump made it look like the Ukraine scandal is just about toppling him at the 2020 presidential election, misstating the 232 electoral votes his opponent, Hillary Clinton, got in 2016.

“The Do Nothing Democrats should be focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLS—, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016, 223-306,” Trump tweeted. “Get a better candidate this time, you’ll need it!”

Trump has apparently pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, his potential opponent for the 2020 presidential election, and his son, Hunter, before Kiev can receive the US military aid.

Pelosi said in a presser earlier in the day that House Democrats want to work with Trump on reducing drug prices despite the impeachment inquiry underway.

“The American people want us to do that. If the president is saying ‘if you question my actions I can’t agree on any subject,’ then the ball is in his court,” she said.

Trump, however, shattered prospects that the White House might opt to cooperate with the House over any issues.

“Nancy Pelosi just said that she is interested in lowering prescription drug prices & working on the desperately needed USMCA. She is incapable of working on either,” Trump tweeted. “It is just camouflage for trying to win an election through impeachment. The Do Nothing Democrats are stuck in mud!”

Schiff, for his part, called out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was on a July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, yet rejected the Democrats’ subpoena over the case.

“We are deeply concerned about Secretary Pompeo’s effort now to potentially interfere with witnesses whose testimony is needed before our committee,” he said, adding that any attempts to interfere with witness testimony “will be considered as evidence of obstruction.”

Trump also attacked Schiff and defended the former spymaster at the helm of his state department.

“Adam Schiff should only be so lucky to have the brains, honor and strength of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “For a lowlife like Schiff, who completely fabricated my words and read them to Congress as though they were said by me, to demean a First in Class at West Point, is SAD!”

The House speaker has vowed to look into Trump’s case impartially.

“We will treat the president with fairness as we go forward,” Pelosi said. “We will have investigations and questioning that are worthy of the Constitution of the United States. It is unworthy of the Constitution what the president did in that call.”

Source: Presstv

In New York, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran refused to engage in a phone conversation with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, which had been secretly arranged by French President Emmanuel Macron, leaving Trump waiting on the line, US media reports say.

The New Yorker magazine reported on Monday that Macron had tried to engineer a three-way conversation by having technicians set up a secure line in a meeting room on Rouhani’s floor at the Millennium Hilton Hotel across the road from the UN General Assembly (UNGA), on September 24 evening.

The French leader, it added, hoped that the telephone conversation would lay the groundwork for the first meeting between an American president and an Iranian president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Sources familiar with last Tuesday’s events said, “The call to Trump’s line came through at 9:30. Macron took the call. But Rouhani never emerged from his room.”

“As we have been doing for several months, we worked in New York to get Iran to make new commitments and for the US, in exchange, to ease sanctions,” a French diplomat told The New Yorker. “We made technical arrangements in the event that a telephone call could take place. That call did not take place.” 

Later on Monday, The New York Times confirmed the report, saying that Rouhani had left Trump hanging and Macron waiting outside his hotel suite.

“The telephone line had been secretly set up. President Trump waited on the other end. All President Hassan Rouhani of Iran had to do was come out of his hotel suite and walk into a secure room where Mr. Trump’s voice would be piped in via speaker,” it said.

According to three people with knowledge of the developments, Macron, accompanied by a small team of advisers, “awaited an answer” outside Rouhani’s suite.

“Messages were passed between them via Mr. Rouhani’s aides,” they said. “In the end, Mr. Rouhani refused even to come out of his room. Mr. Macron left empty-handed and Mr. Trump was left hanging.”

Macron has been seeking to play a mediatory role aimed at easing Washington-Tehran tensions, which have been on the rise since the US withdrawal from a 2015 multilateral nuclear deal in May 2018.

The French leader has also been leading European efforts to save the accord, whose fate remains in doubt since Washington’s exit.

Iran has repeatedly rejected Trump’s offer of talks, saying it would not engage in such negotiations unless the US returns to the deal and lifts its unilateral sanctions.

Tehran says negotiations with Washington would be possible within the framework of the P5+1, comprising the US, France, Britain, Russia, China plus Germany, which successfully negotiated the deal with Iran, if Washington meets those conditions.

In a speech at the General Assembly on Wednesday, Rouhani reaffirmed Iran’s position and said he was not interested in a “memento photo” with Trump on the sidelines of the UN meetings, while the US was piling economic pressure on Iran.

“Memento photos are the final stage of negotiations, not the first one,” Rouhani told the world body.

In 2013, Rouhani and then US president Barack Obama held a telephone conversation as the Iranian president was wrapping up his visit to New York for the 68th annual session of the UNGA, as diplomatic efforts were underway between the two sides within the P5+1 format in the run-up to the nuclear deal.

The New York Times cited Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political-risk consulting firm in Washington, as saying that Trump’s desire for negotiations with Iran was meant to “flip the news cycle” from the Ukraine scandal.

“Trump really wants a foreign policy win and can’t find one,” he said. “He thinks talks with Iran now may be his best shot.”

Trump “was especially desperate at the UNGA — he wanted to flip the news cycle from Ukraine and Biden to a dramatic meeting with Rouhani,” he added.

The US president is facing an impeachment inquiry related to allegations that he pressured Ukraine to smear his top Democratic political rival Joe Biden.

Source: Presstv

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that a successful impeachment of President Donald Trump would be worth losing the Democrats’ House majority in 2020.

Pelosi’s latest remarks come days after she announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry into the president. Nearly all House Democrats have publicly backed the inquiry, though about a dozen have yet to endorse it.

Speaking in an interview at Tribune Fest, hosted by the Texas Tribune, the California Democrat suggested that complying with Congress’ mandate to hold the president answerable is more important than politics.

When asked by Tribune CEO Evan Smith whether “any of the stuff we’re talking about” would impact her “ability to hold control of the House in 2020,” she said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Our first responsibility is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“People say you have to take a political risk doing that. That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. Because we cannot have a president of the United States undermining his oath of office, his loyalty to his oath of office, undermining our national security, and undermining the integrity of our elections.”

She also said more Americans now favor the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

“In the public, the tide has completely changed; it could change now – who knows – but right now after seeing the complaint and the IG (Inspector General) report and the cavalier attitude the administration had towards it, the American people are coming to a different decision,” Pelosi said at the journalism event.

In a recent Hill-HarrisX poll, 47 percent of respondents said they supported the move, while 42 percent said they opposed it.

Also, a NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist survey found that 49 percent of American adults favored impeachment, whereas 46 percent disliked the idea.

Support for the move surged following revelations this week that Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden and had temporarily held up aid for the country over the summer.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, claiming that he held up the aid because he wanted other countries to contribute more to Ukraine’s defense, while Democrats argue the move amounted to the president seeking help from a foreign power against a political rival.

The White House released a memo of the July call between the presidents in which Trump encouraged Zelensky to look into Biden, the Democratic presidential front-runner.

While many Republicans have yet to weigh in regarding the impeachment inquiry, one GOP lawmaker has expressed support for investigating the allegations over Ukraine.

Culled from Presstv

European leaders have threatened to start withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in November if Tehran does not return to full compliance.

President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, and has since reinstated old sanctions and imposed new ones on Tehran in the hope of crippling its economy and forcing it into falling in line. 

Since then, Europe says it has strived to preserve the deal, setting up a financial mechanism called INSTEX to help Iran circumvent US sanctions. But in reality not much has been achieved. Trade with Iran has not surged via INSTEX, and Europe has not stood up to the US over its illegal sanctions and unceremonious withdrawal from the historic deal. And yet Iran is the signatory being asked to cooperate.

Three separate steps have been taken so far by Iran and the fourth is scheduled for November. Tehran wants the US sanctions to be lifted, but as pressure on the Iranian people increases with inflation skyrocketing and vital goods and medicines becoming increasingly scarce, the government is losing patience.

This past week European leaders tried to orchestrate a meeting between Trump and Rouhani at the UN General Assembly. Macron told Rouhani it was an opportunity he shouldn’t miss, but Iran’s president was candid.

So no talks on any level until all US sanctions are lifted. During and after the UN general assembly Europe’s tone became increasingly aggressive towards Tehran. The JCPOA’s European trio blamed Iran for the attacks on Saudi oil refineries and threatened to withdraw from the nuclear deal in November if Iran did not return to full compliance. 

Source: Presstv

The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the burgeoning controversy over President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president claims not only that Trump misused his office for personal gain and endangered national security, but that unidentified White House officials tried to keep it a secret even within the government.

In seven stark, carefully worded pages, the unidentified whistleblower alleged the commander in chief pushed his foreign counterpart to investigate Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and that senior White House officials then tried to “lock down” records related to the matter.

The pressure, the whistleblower alleged, came in a phone call July 25 between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, an exchange that turned so politically problematic that White House lawyers directed other officials to remove the electronic transcript of the conversation from the computer system where it was stored.

The transcript, the whistleblower alleged, was then loaded onto a separate system meant for highly classified information. And according to White House officials who informed the whistleblower, that was “not the first time” a transcript was put there due to concerns about politics rather than national security, the complaint alleged.

Trump, the whistleblower wrote, was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

The whistleblower’s assertions — made public Thursday after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) released the person’s complaint — fueled an already intense political battle that this week led congressional Democrats to formally launch an inquiry into whether Trump should be impeached.

At a hearing to question Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, Democrats pressed him on why he had not given them the complaint sooner, as they say the law required. Republicans attacked the reliability of the whistleblower’s information as unproven hearsay.

Maguire told lawmakers he believed the whistleblower had acted “in good faith,” but declined to offer any conclusion about the allegations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) read portions of the complaint to reporters Thursday, declaring: “This is a coverup.”

Trump lashed out publicly and privately against the accusations. At a closed-door event in New York to thank U.S. personnel who had worked on Trump’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly, the president suggested darkly that the people who spoke about his conversation with Zelensky should be viewed as traitors.

“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” he said in a recording of the remarks obtained by the Los Angeles Times. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

(Source: The Washington Post)

Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has announced the launch of a formal inquiry into whether President Donald Trump should be impeached over a controversial Ukraine call.

Pelosi made the announcement on Tuesday after meetings with Democratic congressional leaders and working out plans to move toward impeachment proceedings against Trump over his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

During the phone call, Trump allegedly sought Ukraine’s help to smear the former vice president and current front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden.

“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said in a televised address.

“Therefore, today I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry,” Pelosi added. “The president must be held accountable; no one is above the law.”

Trump reportedly urged Zelensky about eight times during the phone call to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate government corruption involving Biden and his son, Hunter.

Source: Presstv

Pressure is escalating for Democrats in the US Congress to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump over allegations that the Republican president had asked his Ukrainian counterpart to launch an investigation that could damage Democratic political rival Joe Biden.

Speaking to reporters as he arrived at the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, a defiant Trump said he is taking the impeachment threat “not at all seriously”

“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption… and largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like vice president Biden and his son, creating… the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump said.

Trump also sought to deflect any blame from himself and redirect it towards Biden, accusing the former vice president, without evidence, of engaging in corruption in Ukraine.

The latest crisis for Trump was sparked earlier this month after The Washington Post reported that Trump made a phone call in July to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and allegedly attempted to coerce Zelensky into finding damning information about Biden’s son’s business dealings in Ukraine.

On Sunday, Trump acknowledged that he discussed Biden and his son in a call with the Ukrainian president.

Several Democrats now argue that Trump’s call for Ukraine to investigate Biden, and what they suspect was a threat to condition $250 million in aid to Ukraine on an investigation of Biden, is impeachable conduct.

That view may be pushing House leaders towards a tipping point for launching removal proceedings.

The Democratic leader of a key congressional panel said on Sunday the pursuit of Trump’s impeachment may be the “only remedy” to the situation.

Amid the growing pressure, several Republicans in the US Senate, which would hold a trial of Trump should the House impeach him, have signaled they want the president to be more transparent about the call and the whistleblower’s complaint.

“I would just urge the president — you know, he’s talking openly about the conversation — to release as much as possible,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump loyalist, told the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

However, Democrat leaders have hesitated to pull the impeachment trigger. Launching impeachment proceedings could be a politically risky move ahead of a presidential election.

Source: Presstv

The chairman of US House intelligence committee has threatened President Donald Trump with impeachment amid controversy over his phone call with Ukraine’s president.

Adam Schiff said on Sunday that impeachment would be the “only remedy” if an investigation revealed that the US president had pressured his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate possible corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

“If the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader to do something illicit, to provide dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is co-equal to the evil that conduct represents,” Schiff told the CNN.

Schiff, who has so far been reluctant to push for presidential impeachment, said it “may be that we do have to move forward with that extraordinary remedy” if Trump sought information on Biden and his son.

“[I] want the country to understand this is the last resort,” Schiff added. “The president is pushing us down this road.”

News outlets reported last week that Trump urged Zelensky about eight times during a phone call to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper the US president’s potential 2020 opponent.

Biden said there should be an investigation into Trump’s call, denouncing the action as “an overwhelming abuse of power.”

Trump on Saturday dismissed the Ukraine allegations as another witch-hunt attempting to smear his already tarnished reputation and damage his popularity as the Americans get closer to the 2020 presidential election.

Now that the Democrats and the Fake News Media have gone “bust” on every other of their Witch Hunt schemes, they are trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, call it the Ukraine Witch Hunt, while at the same time trying to protect Sleepy Joe Biden. Will fail again!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2019

In an interview with local media on Saturday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko insisted that his country was independent and that Kiev would never take sides with either party in US politics.

Addressing a July phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky, the Ukrainian minister said there was no coercion and the conversation was friendly.

Biden is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2020 election.

Since launching his bid for 2020 presidency, Biden has been referred to as “Sleepy Joe” by Trump, among other cases of name-calling.

The 76-year-old politician has also been lambasted for what his opponents and others have deemed inappropriate touching, hugging and sniffing of women and children. Biden has dismissed such allegations.

Source: Presstv