Voters are now evenly split on whether Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, a marked increase in support for impeachment.
A poll, which began after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her support for impeachment proceedings on Tuesday, shows 43 percent of voters think Congress should begin the process of impeachment, while an equal number of poll respondents say Congress shouldn’t begin impeachment proceedings. Another 13 percent of voters are undecided.
Support for impeachment is up 7 points from the previous poll, which was conducted last Friday through Sunday.
A nine-page whistleblower complaint might have been the most-read document in Washington on Thursday — but not among Senate Republicans.
Even Republican senators who had patiently responded to reporters’ questions earlier in the week—after the White House released a transcript of the call—said they had not read the whistleblower complaint in the final hours before they left town.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has taken a relatively cautious approach, was among the GOP lawmakers who remained silent about the complaint Thursday.
Some Republicans who serve on the Senate intelligence panel said they had read the report and spoke soberly about it. “Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons and say there’s no there there when there’s obviously a lot that’s very troubling there,” said Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to Trump's interactions with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as part of its impeachment inquiry.
The subpoena, which demands Pompeo provide documents by Oct. 4, was accompanied by a plan to depose five State Department officials, including Ambassador Kurt Volker, who reportedly arranged for Trump's personal lawyer to meet with high-level Ukrainian officials, and Marie Yovanovitch, who was removed as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine by Trump.
"The subpoenaed documents shall be part of the impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees. Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” wrote House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings in a joint letter to Pompeo.
Ukraine lawmakers seek new probes into allegations at ‘epicenter’ of U.S. political battles
Lawmakers in Ukraine are seeking to launch probes into some of the same allegations at the heart of the Trump administration’s dirt-digging efforts, including possibly reopening inquiries into the Ukrainian natural gas firm with connections to Hunter Biden.
A separate probe by Ukraine also has the potential to add sizzle to White House efforts to charge up President Trump’s base and lend legitimacy to his demands for Ukrainian prosecutors to look again at corruption allegations — despite no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.
Those advocating for the parliament investigations say they address any potential loose ends and try to defuse Ukraine’s potentially explosive role in the 2020 presidential election. But they also acknowledge that their effort could have the opposite effect and keep Ukraine in the middle of the impeachment debate in Washington.
The whistleblower complaint made public Thursday alleges a wide-ranging effort by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to pressure Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and others. It details mounting concern by both men that Zelensky, a former comedian elected in April, might be unwilling to take part. On Thursday, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, said that Hunter Biden “did not violate” any Ukraine laws during Lutsenko’s tenure from May 2016 until this August.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose actions as Trump’s personal lawyer have helped set in motion an impeachment inquiry, abruptly canceled his scheduled paid appearance at a Kremlin-backed conference in Armenia next week.
Giuliani, who confirmed to The Washington Post on Friday morning that he would attend the event, reversed himself that evening after The Post reported on his participation in the meeting, which Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials are expected to attend. The two-day conference is sponsored by Russia and the Moscow-based Eurasian Economic Union, a trade alliance launched by Putin in 2014 as a counterweight to the European Union.
According to an agenda for the event posted online, Giuliani was set to participate in a panel led by Sergey Glazyev, a longtime Putin adviser who has been under U.S. sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine five years ago.
Giuliani said Friday evening that he was no longer planning to attend the meeting. “I didn’t know Putin was going,” he said in a brief interview, adding in a text: “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
Trump this summer withheld military aid from Ukraine, which counts on U.S. support to help fend off pro-Moscow separatists in the country’s eastern provinces. As part of his efforts in Ukraine, Giuliani has said the focus on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has overlooked what he claims was meddling by Kiev.
The White House and State Department declined to comment.
David Kramer, a former State Department official responsible for Russia and Ukraine during the George W. Bush administration, called it “terrible judgment” for Giuliani to have agreed to attend, saying his participation would have lent “credibility to an organization Putin set up as an alternative to the European Union.” Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration, said he was surprised Giuliani would agree to attend the Eurasian conference, particularly since the organization was a flash point in Russian-Ukrainian tensions. He noted it was created by Putin at a time when Ukraine was considering joining the European Union.
Before backing out of the event, Giuliani said that he was unaware his panel at next week’s conference was again scheduled to feature Glazyev. In interviews this week, Giuliani has rejected any scrutiny of his conduct, saying attention instead should be put on his claims about former vice president Joe Biden and the Democrats. “I’m not an idiot. I know you all are going after me. I know what you guys are doing with this,” he said.
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