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US-POLITICS-IMPEACHMENT
Trump conduct worse than Nixon’s: Democratic impeachment head
WASHINGTON, Nov 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Donald Trump’s conduct with Ukraine
was far worse than the behavior that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall, the
head of the congressional impeachment probe said Thursday as he summed up the
case for the US president’s removal.
Lawmakers investigating whether Trump abused his office by bullying Ukraine
into assisting his reelection efforts have spent three days hearing the most
explosive witness testimony since the scandal broke.
Democrats accuse Trump of demanding Ukraine’s assistance in a July 25 phone
call and via a circle of accomplices, mainly senior figures in his
administration.
He stalled almost $400 million in military aid and a White House visit for
new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, allegedly to coerce Kiev — which
is at war with Russia — into helping.
The plot would have worked, say Democrats, if not for a whistleblower whose
complaint about the July call reached Congress on September 9, ensuring the
aid was handed over two days later.
“What we’ve seen here is far more serious than a third-rate burglary of the
Democratic headquarters,” said House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam
Schiff, referring to the infamous 1972 Watergate break-in that Nixon ordered,
eventually leading to his resignation.
“What we’re talking about here is the withholding of recognition in that
White House meeting (and) the withholding of military aid to an ally at war.
This is beyond anything Nixon did.”
– Strong evidence –
Schiff spoke at the close of marathon testimony by nine witnesses over
three days — on top of two days of hearings last week — that produced an
avalanche of corroboration for the allegations against Trump.
Democrats are expected to prepare formal articles accusing Trump of abusing
his presidential powers, bribery and obstruction of justice.
The investigation threatens to make him the third US president to be
impeached, although the Republican-controlled Senate would need to convict
him to remove him from office.
In bombshell testimony Wednesday, Washington’s envoy to the European Union
testified that Trump tied the White House meeting to the investigation of
Democratic 2020 frontrunner Joe Biden.
Ambassador Gordon Sondland told the panel Trump ordered him and other
diplomats to answer to the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a
private citizen with no public office, on Ukraine policy.
The former Soviet state, Democrats have noted, is not in the European
Union.
Giuliani’s demands to Ukraine for investigations, Sondland said, “were a
quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky.”
– Ukraine ‘fictions’ –
On Thursday a former top White House Russia expert publicly rejected a
Kremlin conspiracy theory pushed by Trump and his Republican allies that
Ukraine helped the Democrats in the 2016 election.
The supposed plot, which Trump also asked Zelensky to investigate, was
designed to stir havoc in US politics, said Fiona Hill, a senior official on
Trump’s National Security Council until July.
“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by
the Russian security services themselves,” she told lawmakers.
“These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic
political purposes.”
Hill testified that she and other specialists involved in Ukraine policy
were unnerved by the efforts of Trump, Giuliani and Sondland between March
and September to pressure Ukraine.
Sondland, she told the House Intelligence Committee, “was involved in a
domestic political errand” at odds with her team’s focus on US national
security policy toward Ukraine.
“What we were trying to do was block him from straying into domestic
politics,” she said.
“I said to him… I think this is all going to blow up. And here we are,”
she told the panel.
– ‘Sick hatred’ –
Trump backers in Congress and the media have increasingly struggled to
defend the president, mostly complaining about the process and impugning the
motives of a roll call of nonpartisan witnesses rather than offering evidence
to counter the accusations against him.
“What is happening is not good for our culture, not good for our nation,
and yet the Democrats do not care,” said Republican Representative Jim
Jordan.
“The facts are on the president’s side. The truth is on the president’s
side.”
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said Democrats were clearly
“motivated by a sick hatred for President Trump and their rabid desire to
overturn the 2016 election.”
But Schiff delivered a powerful argument at the conclusion of the hearings
Thursday that Trump believed he was “beyond accountability.”
“And in my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president
who believes they are above the law,” Schiff said.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0844 hrs