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Pentagon official testifies about withheld military aid to Ukraine

Laura Cooper's closed-door testimony could strengthen the Democrats impeachment inquiry.

By KYLE CHENEY, ANDREW DESIDERIO and WESLEY MORGAN

10/23/2019 06:01 PM EDT

Updated: 10/23/2019 07:23 PM EDT

A Pentagon official who sought the release of U.S. military aid to Ukraine — withheld by the White House amid attempts to persuade Ukraine to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals — testified Wednesday to House impeachment investigators about her knowledge of the episode amid attempts by the Trump administration to block her appearance.

Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, appeared despite an effort by the Pentagon to block her cooperation. Her testimony was also delayed for more than five hours Wednesday after dozens of House Republicans stormed the secure facility inside the Capitol where investigators were set to depose her.

An official who works on the impeachment inquiry said Cooper testified for more than three hours behind closed doors under subpoena — a repeat of the tactic lawmakers have used to circumvent other attempts by the Trump administration to block witnesses from complying with interview requests.

Cooper’s testimony could fill in details of an explosive aspect of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry: whether Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military aid from Ukraine to pressure the ally’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open two politically motivated investigations into Trump’s Democratic adversaries. The hold on aid came amid Ukraine’s struggle to fend off Russian aggression in Crimea and despite authorization from Congress and the Defense Department to allocate the funds.

Trump’s budget office, instead, blocked the aid in late July — news first revealed by POLITICO on August 29. The administration lifted the hold on the aid on Sept. 11 as bipartisan scrutiny of the decision mounted.

Democrats were largely tight-lipped emerging from Cooper’s deposition. However, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a conservative ally of the president, said elements of her testimony conflicted with that of William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine who testified a day earlier. His testimony provided the first direct link between Trump and an effort to tie the military aid to politically motivated investigations. Meadows declined to detail the purported discrepancies.

Cooper’s testimony comes despite the Pentagon blowing off a deadline last week to comply with a subpoena for documents related to the episode.

Cooper was also the first Defense Department witness to defy a directive not to testify, a sign that Trump’s blockade of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has continued to erode. Several senior State Department officials and a former National Security Council official have already taken the same route.

On Wednesday, three defense officials indicated they were collecting and reviewing documents in response to the House subpoena but were sending them to the White House, rather than Congress, to screen for potential privileged materials.

However, the White House has vowed to resist any attempt by Democrats to seek materials for their ongoing impeachment probe.

The process of collecting documents began on Oct. 3, when the Pentagon’s top lawyer first learned of the inquiry and ordered the department to preserve records related to it, the three defense officials said.

“There are thousands and thousands of pages that are potentially responsive,” one of the defense officials said. But “we don’t own a lot of the documents that are particularly of interest here.”

Aside from Cooper, no other Pentagon officials have been subpoenaed, the officials added.

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What are these Republicans so afraid of? THE TRUTH!!! The members who participated in this stunt should be arrested and /or fined!!

Impeachment deposition delayed after Republicans storm proceedings

Testimony didn't begin until five hours after it was supposed to start. The stunt came after Trump called on the GOP to 'get tough.'

By ANDREW DESIDERIO and MELANIE ZANONA | Published October 23, 2019 12:03 PM EDT, Updated: 05:55 PM EDT

Politico | Posted October 23, 2019 |

Dozens of House Republicans on Wednesday stormed the secure facility inside the Capitol where impeachment investigators have been deposing witnesses, forcing a delay to the proceedings on the heels of damning new revelations that could further imperil President Donald Trump.

GOP lawmakers who do not sit on the three committees leading the inquiry initially refused to leave the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the Capitol, prompting a standoff with Democrats that ultimately led the House’s sergeant-at-arms to intervene.

After a five-hour stalemate, the Republicans ultimately left and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper began her testimony behind closed doors.

According to people familiar with the matter, some Republican lawmakers brought their cell phones into the secure area — a significant violation of House rules. Another person said the room had to be fully swept for potential security breaches, and Democrats said the Republicans compromised national security by bringing electronics into a secure area.

An official working on the impeachment inquiry said some GOP lawmakers “refused to completely remove” their devices even after being reprimanded by security personnel and the House’s sergeant-at-arms, adding that the House’s parliamentarian concluded that the GOP lawmakers who stormed the facility violated House deposition rules.

Republicans said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was threatening them with ethics violations. Schiff was also consulting with the House's sergeant-at-arms.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared to excuse the lawmakers who brought their cell phones into the secure area, telling POLITICO: “These are individuals who have never been in Intel Committee before or anywhere else. So it’s nothing serious from that matter.”

Democrats describing the scene were visibly frustrated and vowed that the Republican effort would not throw their impeachment inquiry off course. They said the stunt showed that Republicans were reeling from Tuesday’s testimony by William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, who directly tied Trump to a quid pro quo with the eastern European nation involving critical military aid.

“It’s completely inappropriate. When the facts are against you, the law is against you, the president clearly committed a crime, you’re left with arguing the process,” said Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), who witnessed the chaos unfold behind closed doors.

“It’s a bunch of Freedom Caucus members having pizza around a conference table pretending to be brave,” added Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), referring to the hard-line conservative group. “All they basically did here was to storm a castle that they already occupied.”

The GOP stunt, led by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), comes as Trump has demanded that Republicans “get tough and fight” for him in the impeachment probe. But Republicans have struggled to defend Trump on the substance of the allegations against him, and have instead focused on hammering Democrats over what they see as an illegitimate impeachment process.

The Republican effort came one day after Democrats secured some of their most explosive findings in the impeachment probe. Yet GOP lawmakers — at least for the first half of the day — successfully changed the conversation; instead of being pressed for reaction to Taylor’s testimony, they were fielding questions from reporters about the drama unfolding inside the secure facility.

Republicans knew they would be turned away from the closed-door deposition; only members who sit on the authorized committees are permitted to sit in on the sessions. Scores of Republicans who sit on the three panels leading the inquiry have been participating in the witness interviews.

Another person in the room said Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) was “getting in the faces of and shouting at Democrats.”

“It was tense,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Later Wednesday, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote a letter to the House’s sergeant-at-arms demanding that he “take action” against the GOP lawmakers who breached security inside the SCIF.

But the GOP has been girding for a showdown with Democrats over the inquiry, which they believe is being conducted unfairly. Democrats expressed frustration with the stunt on Wednesday, saying it put a scheduled deposition on hold.

“They basically ran over a member of the staff” to get in the room, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). “They just came into the room and started shouting about the president. Literally some of them were just screaming … saying that the process is wrong.”

One Republican who has been able to attend the proceedings, Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, acknowledged that the closed-door nature of the impeachment proceedings are consistent with the House’s procedures.

“This may be within House rules. That’s not the question. The question is, is it a good idea to impeach the president in secret hearings?” Stewart said. “This may very well be within Chairman Schiff’s and Nancy Pelosi’s authority to do this. I think it’s a bad idea.”

Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry have been gathering evidence for the probe behind closed doors, asserting that secrecy is paramount in order to protect the integrity of the investigation. Republicans have said the depositions should be done in public.

Republicans also argue it is unfair that only members of the three committees spearheading the inquiry — Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs — are permitted to attend the closed-door interviews. GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee asserted it was their right to attend Cooper’s deposition because she works at the Pentagon, which falls under their committee’s jurisdiction.

“I represent nearly a million Floridians who are asking me my thoughts on this process, and yet I can’t relay to them anything except what’s being leaked to the media. It is really a travesty,” said Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the Armed Services panel.

In reality, more than 45 House Republicans — nearly a quarter of the House GOP conference — already have full access to the depositions through their membership on one of the three panels leading the impeachment inquiry. During the depositions, Republican lawyers are given the same amount of time to question witnesses as Democratic counsels.

Later Wednesday, the Democratic chairs of the three committees sent a letter to the State Department demanding that it turn over documents “that are directly and highly relevant” to the impeachment probe.

Taylor told investigators during his deposition on Tuesday that he took notes to document his conversations, according to people who were in the room for his testimony. And Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a key figure in the scandal, has said he wants to turn over documents but is being blocked by the State Department.

Heather Caygle and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

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Senate Republicans Duck For Cover After Explosive Taylor Testimony

But some GOP senators like Majority Whip John Thune acknowledged the picture being reported is “not a good one.”

By BURGESS Everett | Published October 23, 2019 Updated 4:23 PM ET | Politico | Posted October 23, 2019 |

If a top U.S. envoy’s testimony about Ukraine is a Capitol Hill bombshell, the Senate appears to be outside the blast zone.

Senate Republicans are largely dodging questions about the substance of William Taylor’s testimony, which rocked the GOP argument that President Donald Trump did not engage in a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government.

While GOP senators aren’t defending the president’s alleged behavior, many are throwing out a litany of complaints about House Democrats’ procedural handling of the impeachment inquiry and demanding to see more documents and the full transcript of the deposition.

“The way the House is handling it now is like a rolling oppo dump. Every day they take in this testimony and they leak out the pieces that they want,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has reviewed Taylor’s testimony and said he had no reason to doubt the words of the U.S. envoy to Ukraine. “It is a bad process, not just for the president. It’s a bad process for the country.”

Such sentiment may be a sign that the Senate Republicans who will determine whether Trump is removed from office in any impeachment trial aren’t ready to break with him just yet. But it also suggests that Republicans are more comfortable fighting on process grounds rather than substance, given they don't know what revelations might emerge next.

And some are refusing to play ball at all. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), for example, said he has no plans to review any more daily, hourly or “minute-by-minute” coverage of the impeachment proceedings.

“I don’t know Bill Taylor from Adam. I know you better than I know Bill Taylor. I’ve been busy… doing important things, not participating in a sham process over in the House,” Cornyn said. “The drip drip drip of leaked testimony is producing daily news stories like you’re asking me about it. It’s part of their plan and scheme and I do not approve.”

“It appears to be an important piece of evidence. But without being present for the Q and A and without more transparency in this process, it’s difficult to assess.”

- Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

Cornyn was not alone. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who has rapped the president for pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, said he will “eventually” get around to reading about Taylor’s testimony but hasn’t yet.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a stark defender of the president, said he too hasn’t reviewed it.

Informed he is mentioned in Taylor’s opening statement, Johnson replied that he’ll “have to read it.”

There does not appear to be a coordinated strategy between the White House and Senate Republicans, leaving many in the party to choose their own way. The White House has not delivered a top-down message to all senators and their offices, according to Republican senators and aides.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, bashed House Democrats for not making public Taylor’s testimony.

But Thune also conceded that the first round of details could be damaging after Taylor testified that Trump refused to release military aid or hold a White House meeting with the Ukrainian president unless he probed Trump’s political opponents.

“The picture coming out of it based on the reporting we’ve seen is, yeah, I would say it’s not a good one,” Thune told reporters. “But I would say also, until we have a process that allows for everybody to see this with full transparency, it’s pretty hard to come to hard and fast conclusions.”

“It appears to be an important piece of evidence. But without being present for the Q and A and without more transparency in this process, it’s difficult to assess,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Taylor “is certainly a credible individual with years of service to his country. By no means” should he be dismissed.

Yet some in her party were doing just that after seeing his opening statement and the subsequent reporting. Trump’s closest allies immediately tried to rebuff the notion that Taylor’s opening statement was explosive, despite the damning picture it painted of Trump dangling aid in exchange for public statements about opening investigations into Biden and the 2016 election.

“It made it easier for me to say this is all bullshit. We don't try somebody in America by releasing an opening statement,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Where is the cross examination? I want to hear him under oath. Nobody would accept this if we were doing it to a Democrat. I can only imagine the pushback we would get.”

“This is a one-side show trial, don’t they do that in Russia?” added Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.). “How could anybody be concerned about it until they hear the counter?”

Those comments, however, don’t reflect the majority of the Senate Republicans, who are likely to sit in judgment of the president in the coming weeks after the House impeaches him. Many GOP senators are approaching the actions of the president and his allies with caution, even as they rail on the process of the impeachment inquiry.

Meanwhile, a surprising number of Republicans said they were unfamiliar with even the gist of Taylor’s testimony.

“Haven’t seen it. Haven’t read it,” said Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the Foreign Relations chairman. He said would not rely on “third-party” descriptions of it.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has expressed discomfort with the prospect of tying aid to an investigation into Biden and is not exactly the closest of allies with the president.

But on Wednesday, she took a reporter’s copy of Taylor’s opening statement and expressed frustration that the House committees hadn’t circulated it themselves.

“How did you get this? Are the committees releasing it? I mean, even the opening statement? Do you think that’s problematic,” she asked. “You guys are trying to report, you’re trying to tell me what was said. But you don’t have it firsthand, I don’t have it firsthand, so how do we know what’s going on?”

She promised to read the document as she stepped onto the Senate subway back to her office.

Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

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Trump allies rush to plug White House hole on impeachment

Outside groups are growing nervous about the uncoordinated response to a widening impeachment inquiry.

By NANCY Cook | Published October 23, 2019 06:30 PM EDT | Politico | Posted October 23, 2019 |

Conservative groups and Trump allies are launching their own individual efforts to fight impeachment, panicked by the slow pace of the White House response.

The Club for Growth unveiled four new digital ad spots on Wednesday to air in congressional districts moderate Democrats won in 2018 including in California, Illinois, New Mexico and Virginia. The ads argue these lawmakers betrayed voters and became too beholden to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by pursing impeachment instead of passing legislation.

Former White House senior strategist Steve Bannon started a daily radio show and podcast this week focused solely on the nitty gritty of impeachment, which he has called a “mortal threat to Trump’s presidency.”

And the Republican National Committee’s 12-member impeachment task force also is buying impeachment-related ads in 30 Democratically controlled congressional districts that President Donald Trump won in 2016. It marks the first time the RNC has bought television spots in eight years.

The individual efforts are springing up as Republicans grow increasingly dismayed by the White House’s delayed reaction to the Democratic impeachment proceedings. Unlike the Supreme Court nomination fights, or the battle to pass a GOP tax bill, the White House has not yet assembled a formidable battle plan or engaged outside allies in a major effort to fight impeachment. The void has left adrift lawmakers on Capitol Hill, prominent conservative leaders and well-funded right-leaning groups, all of whom are struggling to defend the president as Democrats collect congressional testimony and Trump faces the most challenging stretch of his three years in office.

“While I agree that President Trump hasn’t done anything wrong, you should not undervalue the value of messaging to the American people,” said one conservative leader. “It is just not being run like a public relations or political campaign, and I wish it were.”

“It has felt like only the president is out there defending himself, and it seems more dignified to let us street fight for him,” this person added.

The lack of vision, strategy and coordination has been a frequent critique of conservatives and Trump advisers ever since Democrats kicked off the impeachment probe a month ago. The White House has started sending out daily impeachment talking points, but it has not hired any additional staff dedicated to the fight or assembled a separate war room operation as President Bill Clinton’s staff did during his 1990s impeachment battle. To do so, some White House officials say, would go against the narrative that Trump has behaved appropriately.

“It has felt like only the president is out there defending himself, and it seems more dignified to let us street fight for him."

- A conservative leader.

The White House has started to host regular calls between top administration officials and key House Republican lawmakers, who often attend the congressional depositions and testimony. The calls started because both the president and Republican lawmakers wanted more coordination and collaboration, said one senior administration official.

On Tuesday, dozens of House Republicans stormed a secure hearing room where investigators have been deposing witnesses, which delayed the proceedings. The move came after Trump publicly said he wished Republicans were doing more to defend him – and after nearly two dozen members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus met with Trump at the White House for over an hour on Tuesday to discuss impeachment and other matters, according to lawmakers and aides.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, insisted there has been “minimal” coordination between congressional Republicans and the White House.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham praised the House Republicans’ actions, calling them “great.”

“Due process is vital and all of these false allegations being made behind closed doors is dangerous for this country,” Grisham said. “I hope the media, which are generally the first to demand transparency by those in power, will call the Democrats out for holding these meetings in secret.”

More than 45 House Republicans have access to the depositions and transcripts.

But Trump allies say these different moves aren’t enough of a coordinated defense for such a fast-moving story.

“Folks came rushing into the burning building to help with the Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court. People are more than willing to help President Trump now, but they have to be given some direction or an elevator pitch,” said Jason Miller, who served as senior communications adviser to the Trump 2016 campaign. “Once you get past the Republican talking points of Democrats running the impeachment inquiry in private and congressional witnesses not saying anything new, the talking points stop. There has be some meat to give to Trump supporters.”

Miller said Republican lawmakers need to do a better job of strategically leaking information to the media from the behind-closed-doors testimony to build Republicans’ nothing-to-see-here argument. He alleges Democrats are leaking tidbits of information every day to drive news cycle favorable to them.

Some conservatives are pleased with the White House’s primary argument that the impeachment proceedings are unfair because Republicans have been not given due process to call witnesses or cross-examine them. The White House’s top attorney Pat Cipollone laid out this thinking in a recent eight-page letter to Pelosi.

“Building that process argument is very important because it backs up the president’s tweets perfectly,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, who commended Trump as the best lead messenger in the impeachment fight. “His supporters do not trust anyone else in Washington.”

But both McIntosh and other Trump allies argue the White House could marshal more forces to help Trump, with the Club for Growth as one group attempting to lead by example.

“Right now, the boss is doing a good job, but there are very few people amplifying that,” said a former Trump campaign adviser. “That becomes the ultimate problem.”

Conservatives worry the president can’t defend himself all alone and run the country.

“The Clinton machine did a lot of horrible things but one of the things they did well was set up a war room,” said the conservative leader. “At this point, all of the White House’s defense is being done via Twitter. No one argues that the president has a huge microphone, and it works for him in the press. Maybe he has got it? I don’t know. I think it is concerning.”

Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

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And talk about absurd, Trump's lawyers are arguing that because Trump is POTUS he can't be prosecuted with a crime if he shoots someone on 5th Avenue. GO FIGURE!!!

Trump lawyer: Trump can’t be prosecuted for shooting someone

By ERIN DURKIN and DARREN Samuelson | Published 10/23/2019 11:31 AM EDT Updated: 10/23/2019 12:30 PM EDT | Politico | Posted October 23, 2019 |

NEW YORK — Even if President Donald Trump shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, New York authorities could not punish him while he is in office, the president's lawyers argued Wednesday.

Attorneys for Trump made the claim while arguing before a federal appeals court in their suit against Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who has subpoenaed Trump’s tax returns.

Trump is fighting the subpoena on the grounds that as president, he has absolute immunity from criminal indictment or investigation. His attorney said that would block Trump from being arrested and charged even if he followed through on his campaign trail claim: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

Attorney William Consovoy argued that New York authorities would have to wait until the president was out of office to arrest and charge him for that crime. The DA's office argued the claim was a fabrication.

“Once a president is removed from office, any local authority” could prosecute him, Consovoy told a panel of three judges from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. “This is not a permanent immunity.”

Judge Denny Chin pressed him on how the crime would be handled while Trump remained in office. “Nothing could be done, that’s your position?” he said.

“That is correct,” Consovoy replied.

The Manhattan DA subpoenaed eight years of Trump’s tax returns from his accounting firm, Mazars USA, as part of a probe into hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Federal Judge Victor Marrero threw out Trump’s suit seeking to block the subpoena, finding his “extraordinary” claim to be immune from criminal investigation was not supported by the law.

Trump appealed, and the subpoena was put on hold as the case is heard. The sides made oral arguments Wednesday before the Second Circuit.

The case is expected to ultimately make its way to the Supreme Court. Trump’s attorneys and the DA’s office made an agreement that if Trump loses in the appeals court, Vance will hold off on enforcing the subpoena as long as Trump makes his appeal to the Supreme Court within 10 days.

“We view the entire subpoena as an inappropriate fishing expedition not made in good faith,” Consovoy told the judges.

“Everything we’ve heard this morning makes clear the president is a target,” he said. “The district attorney just wants the president’s tax returns.”

Unlike past presidents, Trump has adamantly refused to make his tax returns public.

Carey Dunne, general counsel for the District Attorney, said the privilege the president’s lawyers are claiming is not founded in the law.

“There’s no such thing as presidential immunity for tax returns,” he said.

“He may view them as embarrassing or sensitive but tax returns do in fact get subpoenaed all the time in financial investigations,” he said. “They’re making this up, your honor.”

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