Former Vice President Joe Biden appears to be trying to deflect
attention from his alleged corruption in Ukraine by joining calls for
impeachment. He announced on Tuesday that he’s in favor of impeaching
President Trump if the president does not cooperate with Congress’
official inquiry.
Desperate Donald Trump knows that I can beat him,
so now he’s enlisting the help of a foreign government — once again.
It’s an abuse of power and violates every basic norm of the presidency.
Despite his urgent calls for President Trump to be removed from
office, Biden fell among the vocal majority of the Senate rejecting
former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. At that time, Biden
supported the American people’s choice to elect Clinton into office and
voiced caution when deciding to proceed with the hearing.
“The American people don’t think that they have made a mistake by
electing Bill Clinton,” said Biden. “We in Congress had better be very
careful before we upset their decision and make darn sure that we are
able to convince them, if we decide to upset their decision, that our
decision to impeach him was based upon principle and not politics.”
The former vice president’s new stance contrasts with what he said in
a recent interview, where he claimed the Trump-Ukraine phone call
transcript may reveal an impeachable offense. Ukrainian President
Vladimir Zelensky insisted that he wasn’t pressured during the call. He
said that his administration started a corruption probe into Biden prior
to his conversation with President Trump.
Biden is now accusing the president of violating his constitutional responsibility.
“The thing I learned — we learned, we all learned recently — is that
statement, that the 2000-word statement released was that he talked
about getting the Justice Department engaged in this,” he said. “I mean,
it’s such a blatant abuse of power that it just — I don’t think it can
stand.”
Biden claims he is a victim of abuse of power by President Trump and
has not addressed his effort to blackmail Ukraine to dismiss its chief
prosecutor. Whether the American people will support him in 2020 in
light of yet another one of his flip-flops on hot topic issues remains
to be seen.
Senate Democrats in Republican-leaning states are worried the
impeachment inquiry could ruin any chances of the Democrat Party winning
back the majority in the upper chamber in 2020.
Montana Senator John Tester said it’s vital that House Democrats
focus on President Trump’s July phone call with his Ukrainian
counterpart because he claims the president is the master of pivoting
and deflecting.
“My belief is that now that the speaker has decided to impeach, they
need to make sure it is very, very focused,” he stated. “They need to
get to the bottom of the information as promptly as they can and they
need to move.”
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin echoed the same remarks as Tester,
adding, Democrats should stay away from old issues and focus on
investigating the Ukraine phone call because it deals with a foreign
entity.
However, Democrat Senator Doug Jones said he does not believe the
whistleblower complaint is grounds for impeachment. The Alabama lawmaker
said the complaint is based on hearsay, and he’s skeptical of using
secondhand complaints to oust the president.
“A lot of the whistleblower complaint is, in fact, hearsay,” said
Jones. “It is what other people have told him — that is clear on its
face.”
….the Whistleblower, and also the person who gave
all of the false information to him. This is simply about a phone
conversation that could not have been nicer, warmer, or better. No
pressure at all (as confirmed by Ukrainian Pres.). It is just another
Democrat Hoax!
This comes as other liberal Democrats want a broader investigation to
include issues relating to the Mueller probe and other accusations.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the investigation would solely focus
on the Ukraine conversation and not any other complaints against the
president.
“This is the focus of the moment because this is the charge,”she
stated. “All of the other work that relates to abuse of power, ignoring
subpoenas of the government of Congress, abuse a contempt of Congress by
him — those things will be considered later.”
Pelosi has also said there should be no rush to judgment despite
announcing the impeachment inquiry ahead of the release of the
transcript and the whistleblower’s complaint regarding President Trump’s
Ukraine phone call.
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shot back at Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, on Twitter on Tuesday after he accused her of being “protected and immune” to media scrutiny.
“(The
Washington Post), NBC, and CNN are going after me because I’m the
messenger, and covering up the message, Dem corruption,” Giuliani
tweeted about questions over his involvement in trying to get Ukraine to
investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. “Meanwhile, they have
yet to ask Biden difficult questions because he is protected and immune
like the Clintons and crooked Clinton Foundation!”
“Yes,
I am famously under-scrutinized,” Clinton sarcastically tweeted in
response, alluding to the investigation into her use of a private email
server as secretary of state that dominated the 2016 presidential
campaign, the Benghazi investigation while she was secretary of state as
well as others going back to her time as first lady.
The State Department expanded its investigation into Clinton’s private server in August.
The
House of Representatives is launching an impeachment inquiry into
Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in
which he asked Zelensky to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden
and his son Hunter Biden in the country.
Clinton
is scheduled to appear on both “The View” and “The Rachel Maddow Show”
on Wednesday as she promotes “The Book of Gutsy Women,” which she
co-wrote with her daughter Chelsea Clinton.
President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday he’s considering individual lawsuits against House Democrats
for allegedly violating the constitutional and civil rights of the
president and members of his administration amid new congressional inquiries and subpoenas resulting from a whistleblower’s complaint.
Speaking on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle," Giuliani said he sought the advice of civil rights and constitutional lawyers who recommended such legal action.
“I
think we have to raise their consideration of constitutional and
criminal rights. This is worse than McCarthy. How about a total illicit
impeachment proceeding? This is an illicit, rogue impeachment
proceeding,” Giuliani told host Laura Ingraham.
The
former mayor of New York City suggested that some House Democrats were
guilty of violating Article II of the Constitution, which outlines the
president’s powers during his four-year term as commander in chief,
specifically his power to conduct the foreign policy of the United
States. He also said he may sue Democrats in Congress for allegedly
violating attorney-client privilege and over obstruction-of-justice
claims.
The chairmen of three House committees subpoenaed Giuliani
on Monday, seeking key documents related to the Ukraine controversy as
part of their Trump impeachment inquiry. Giuliani lawyered up Tuesday, hiring former Watergate prosecutor John Sale.
Though
still mounting a defense, Giuliani claimed he has evidence, in the form
of video recordings and interview notes, which are protected from an
additional subpoena under the statute of attorney-client privilege. He
said the evidence incriminates House Democrats for allegedly trying to
threaten foreign powers into keeping quiet amid the impeachment inquiry.
He pointed to the example of Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who
last month boasted to reporters, including conservative columnist John
Solomon, that he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that
cooperating with Trump and Giuliani would be viewed as election meddling
and would be “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations,” The Hill reported.
Giuliani
also accused mainstream media organizations of bias, claiming they
turned a blind eye to the Ukraine activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
“[The
media] are covering up for the Democrats because they are more corrupt
than anyone realizes. They are covering up serious crimes that were
committed against the United States by the Bidens and taking millions
and multimillions of dollars and putting the United States in a very
compromised position,” he said.
“[The media] are
covering up for the Democrats because they are more corrupt than anyone
realizes. They are covering up serious crimes that were committed
against the United States by the Bidens and taking millions and
multimillions of dollars and putting the United States in a very
compromised position.” — Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani said Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are trying to silence him and Attorney General William Barr solely
because they are effective in their legal defense of the president.
Biden's presidential campaign requested in a letter Sunday that major
news networks not invite Giuliani on air anymore, after Giuliani spent
the morning on a series of talk shows aggressively highlighting what he
called Biden's apparently corrupt dealings in Ukraine and China.
Ingraham
mentioned members of Congress are given immunity from prosecution in
regard to comments made during legislative sessions. Giuliani said he
would come after House Democrats for their remarks made outside of
Congress, include Rep. Maxine Waters,
D-Calif., who recently tweeted that Trump should be kept in solitary
confinement, and another unnamed congressmen who allegedly said Barr
should be arrested.
Biden
has acknowledged on camera that, when he was vice president, he
successfully pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who
was investigating the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings — where his son
Hunter Biden had a highly lucrative role on the board paying him tens of
thousands of dollars per month, despite limited relevant expertise. The
elder Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in critical U.S. aid if
Shokin was not fired. Fox News' Gregg Re, Brooke Singman and Blake Burman contributed to this report.
The sixth House Republican from Texas announced Monday that he will not run for re-election
in 2020 as an unfolding “Texodus” marks a shift in American national
politics as Democrats eye the traditionally red Lone Star as potential
battleground territory.
Rep. Mac Thornberry,
who represented a district in the northern Texas panhandle, said in a
press release Monday, quoting a verse from Ecclesiastes: "We are
reminded ... that 'for everything there is a season,' and I believe that
the time has come for a change. Therefore, I will not be a candidate
for reelection in the 2020 election."
He
served 13 terms in Congress since he was first elected to the U.S.
House in 1994, the same year George W. Bush won the presidency.
Thornberry was one of the longest-serving representatives on either
party in Congress, the Dallas Morning News reported.
His impending departure marks the sixth Texas Republican in Congress since July to announce that they will not seek reelection.
Rep.
Pete Olson started the trend, followed by Reps. Mike Conway, Will Hurd,
Kenny Marchant and Bill Flores. Conway is the top Republican on the
House Agriculture Committee and Hurd is the only African American
Republican in Congress, according to NPR.
"While we steadily
invest in the Lone Star State, Washington Republicans just flew into
Texas to declare they'll win back the majority and jetted away without a
plan to stop the Texodus," Lucinda Guinn, executive director of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Dallas Morning
News.
Because Thornberry’s district is strongly
Republican---President Trump won by an 80 percent margin there in
2016—the congressman’s resignation does not pose a risk to the GOP
losing the seat to the Dems come 2020, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Some of the other seats are more vulnerable to a Democratic takeover
come Election Day.
Unlike Democrats, the Republican Party sets
term limits on how long representatives can hold committee leadership
positions in the House. Some speculate Thornberry and other Republican
representatives decided against re-election because they don’t want to
return to the status of a rank-and-file member of Congress. The
Republican Party is considering amending that rule to prevent others
from flying to coop, according to Politico.
Others believe
Republicans in Congress no longer want to serve in a chamber as a member
of the minority party. It’s unlikely the GOP will regain the House as a
result of the 2020 election.
According
to the Texas Tribune Washington bureau chief, Abby Livingston, some GOP
Republicans might have been dissuaded by the smaller margins by which
they won re-election the last time. Though Texas remains red, the
Democrats have gradually been seizing influence in a ground up movement
at the state level, as more of the wealthier suburbs in Houston and
Dallas are now represented by Democrats, according to NPR.
The
recent Texodus comes after the Republican Party lost control of the
House for the first time in eight years following the 2018 midterm
elections. Two GOP congressmen lost their re-election bids that year
while six others announced their retirements in 2018, according to the Dallas Morning News.
EXCLUSIVE – WinRed, the new GOP online fundraising platform designed to compete with Democrats in
the battle for small-dollar campaign donations, has raised over $28
million since launching three months ago, with top officials crediting
the Democrats’ impeachment push for a big spike in fundraising over the last week, Fox News has learned.
WinRed
raised $28.1 million in the third fundraising quarter, which began in
July and ended Monday. The online platform is used to raise money for
President Trump’s re-election, campaign committees and various
Republican candidates across the country.
In an interview,
WinRed's president, Gerrit Lansing, said the Democrats’ moves to ramp up
impeachment efforts against Trump “helped a lot,” saying fundraising
numbers “spiked” after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of a
formal inquiry last week.
WinRed has raised over $11.8 million from over 237,000 contributors since the announcement from Pelosi, D-Calif., he said.
“It just poured gas on the situation where there is a ton of money being raised in all levels and all campaigns,” Lansing said.
The
platform has been off to a stronger start than the Democrats’ version
which launched in 2004. FEC records indicated the $30 million raised
through WinRed was more than what ActBlue -- the Dems' big online
fundraising platform -- raised in its first three and a half years. The
records showed that ActBlue raised $99,000 in its first quarter of
operations from June to August 2004.
“They
were starting in a position that didn’t have all the party behind it,”
Lansing said of ActBlue. “The DNC wasn’t on ActBlue until several years
ago. Hillary and Obama weren’t on ActBlue,” he said, referring to former
President Obama and ex-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
But,
ActBlue has grown into a fundraising behemoth since then: it
raised $246 million in the second fundraising quarter of this year.
Lansing
said WinRed has benefitted from top Republican campaigns and
organizations embracing it from the beginning. WinRed launched in late
June, and this was the platform’s first full fundraising quarter.
“We’re
starting off with a big bang where everyone’s on it, everyone’s excited
about, and I think it reflects in that big number in our first three
months,” he said.
Those running WinRed were hoping to raise $20-25
million this quarter but blew through it after last week’s impeachment
drama. The days leading up to the end of the quarter – when campaigns
would ramp up fundraising appeals – also could see increases in
donations. WinRed had over 601,000 donations this quarter.
“Impeachment helped a lot with that,” Lansing said.
Republicans have boasted of increased fundraising
in the wake of the impeachment inquiry announcement. Officials said the
Trump campaign, along with the RNC, brought in $5 million in the 24
hours after Pelosi’s announcement. National Republican Congressional
Committee officials also said its online fundraising soared by 608
percent on the day Pelosi announced the inquiry.
EXCLUSIVE: A photo obtained by Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" shows former Vice President Joe Biden
and his son Hunter golfing in the Hamptons with Devon Archer, who
served on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma
Holdings with Hunter.
Earlier this month, Joe Biden told Fox News in Iowa that he never discussed his son’s foreign business dealings with him.
“I
have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,”
Biden said, pointing the finger at President Trump. “I know Trump
deserves to be investigated. He is violating every basic norm of a
president. You should be asking him why is he on the phone with a
foreign leader, trying to intimidate a foreign leader. You should be
looking at Trump.”
Hunter Biden told The New Yorker previously that he and his father had spoken “just once” about his work in Ukraine.
A source told Fox News the photo was taken in August 2014. Contemporaneous news reports indicated the vice president was in the Hamptons at the time.
Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma Holdings board in April 2014.
Earlier
this month, Trump suggested that despite his claims, Joe Biden
seemingly discussed Ukraine matters with his son. The White House has
sought to point to possible corruption by the Bidens, amid the House
Democrats' formal impeachment inquiry against the president.
Devon Archer, far left, with former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, far right, in 2014.
“And now, he made a lie when he said he never spoke to his son,” Trump said. “Of course you spoke to your son!”
Biden has acknowledged on camera that
in spring 2016, when he was vice president, he successfully
pressured Ukraine to fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time,
Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings — where Hunter had a lucrative role on the board despite limited relevant expertise.
The vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.
"Well, son of a b---h, he got fired," Biden joked at a panel two years after leaving office.
Shokin himself had already been widely accused of corruption.
Critics alleged Hunter Biden might have been selling access to his father, who had pushed Ukraine to increase its natural gas production.
"Impossible
to justify $50k/month for Hunter Biden serving on a Ukrainian energy
board w zero expertise unless he promised to sell access," political
scientist Ian Bremmer tweeted.
Trump
attorney Rudy Giuliani, on Sunday, suggested Shokin was the target of
an international smear campaign to discredit his work.
In a combative interview on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday,
Giuliani presented what he said was an affidavit signed by Shokin that
confirmed Hunter Biden was being investigated when Shokin was fired.
"I
have an affidavit here that's been online for six months that nobody
bothered to read from the gentleman who was fired, Viktor Shokin, the
so-called corrupt prosecutor," Giuliani said. "The Biden people say that
he wasn't investigating Hunter Biden at the time. He says under oath
that he was." The Shokin affidavit purportedly said the U.S.
had pressured him into resigning because he was unwilling to drop the
case.
Later,
Giuliani added: "I have another affidavit, this time from another
Ukrainian prosecutor who says that the day after Biden strong-armed the
president to remove Shokin, they show up in the prosecutor’s office --
lawyers for Hunter Biden show up in the prosecutor’s office and they
give an apology for dissemination of false information."
After
anchor George Stephanopoulos expressed skepticism, Giuliani fired
back: "How about if I -- how about if I tell you over the next week four
more of these will come out from four other prosecutors? ... No, no,
no, George, they won’t be [investigated], because they’ve been online
for six months, and the Washington press will not accept the fact that
Joe Biden might have done something like this."
Speaking separately to Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Giuliani brought up the affidavits and called the situation Clintonesque.
“The
pattern is a pattern of pay for play. It includes something very
similar to what happened to the Clinton Foundation," Giuliani said,
"which goes to the very core of, what did Obama know and when did he
know it?"
Giuliani referred to a December 2015 New York Times article
about Hunter Biden, Burisma and a Ukrainian oligarch, and how the
younger Biden's involvement with the Ukrainian company could undermine
then-Vice President Biden's anti-corruption message.
"The question
is," Giuliani asked, "when Biden and Obama saw that article, about how
the son was pulling down money from the most crooked oligarch in Russia,
did Obama call Biden in and say, 'Joe, how could you be doing this?'" “Tucker Carlson Tonight” producer Alex Pfeiffer contributed to this report.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,
criticized a report by the New York Times that claimed President Trump
"pressed" the prime minister of Australia for information to discredit
the probe conducted by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, calling it an "effort" to shut down Attorney General William Barr's investigation.
"This
New York Times article about Barr talking to Australia is the beginning
of an effort to shut down Barr's investigation to find out how this
whole thing started," Graham said on "Hannity" Monday.
A Justice Department official told
Fox News on Monday that Barr asked Trump to make introductions to
foreign countries that might have had information pertinent to U.S.
Attorney John Durham's ongoing probe into possible misconduct by the
intelligence community at the outset of the Russia investigation.
But,
a person familiar with the situation told Fox News it would be wrong to
say Trump "pressed" the Australian prime minister for information that
could have discredited Mueller's now-completed probe, as the New York Times reported earlier Monday.
Graham
said that Barr should be talking with Australia as well as the U.K. and
Italy in order to do his job properly. He also said he would write a
letter to those three countries asking them to cooperate with Barr and
cited a letter his colleagues sent to Ukraine last year asking them to
cooperate with Mueller or the U.S. would stop sending aid.
"So
here's what I want American people to know: it's OK to cooperate with
Mueller to get Trump but it's not OK to cooperate with Barr to find out
if Trump was the victim of an out-of-control intelligence operation,"
Graham said. "We're not going to have a country like that."
The
senator told host Sean Hannity it "bothered him" that "the left" would
say it was wrong for Barr to talk with other countries.
"This New
York Times article is an effort to stop Barr from looking at how this
whole thing began in 2016 regarding the Trump campaign," Graham said.
"What are they afraid of." Fox News' Gregg Re and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
Devon Archer, far left, with former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, far right, in 2014.
CNN’s Scott Jennings once again took liberals to the cleaners on the Abrego Garcia case, the ‘Maryland man...
