A report from Republican lawmakers said that the US House of Representatives’ investigation of US President Donald Trump failed to establish any impeachable offenses and instead paints a picture of “unelected bureaucrats” disagreeing with the president’s style, worldview and foreign-policy decisions.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released their conclusions on Monday as the panel’s Democrats are letting members review the majority report after two months of investigation into Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine.
Democrats were expected to release their findings before the Judiciary Committee’s first public hearing today.
The Republican report said that evidence gathered during the inquiry did not establish that Trump withheld US security assistance to pressure Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals for the purpose of benefiting him in next year’s election, or that he sought to obstruct the House’s investigation of those charges.
The findings are to be sent along with the Democratic report to the Judiciary Committee, which is to begin hearings this week to determine whether to bring articles of impeachment against Trump.
The Republican document said that the impeachment case rests “almost entirely on hearsay, presumption and emotion” to arrive at a “predetermined outcome.”
Trump’s request that Ukraine announce an investigation of former US vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s involvement with Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, was not part of a quid pro quo, bribery or extortion, the Republican report said.
Trump was justified in citing corruption as a reason to delay meeting with Ukraine’s president and to withhold security assistance that had already been approved by the US Congress, it said.
“Where there are ambiguous facts, the Democrats interpret them in a light most unfavorable to the president,” it said. “The Democrats also flatly disregard any perception of potential wrongdoing with respect to Hunter Biden’s presence on the board of Burisma Holdings or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.”
Trump on Monday tweeted his support for the Republican findings, repeating a call for people to read the memo the White House released in September of his telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The Republican document also defended the role that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, played in Ukraine.
“There is nothing inherently improper with Mayor Giuliani’s involvement, because the Ukrainians knew that he was a conduit to convince President Trump that President Zelenskiy was serious about reform,” the report said.
The report criticized the impeachment inquiry as relying heavily on career public servants who it said opposed Trump’s approach to foreign policy and the whistleblower complaint in September that prompted the impeachment inquiry.
“Their disagreements with President Trump’s policies and their discomfort with President Trump’s actions set in motion the anonymous, secondhand whistleblower complaint,” the report said. “For Democrats, impeachment is a tool for settling political scores and relitigating election results with which they disagreed.”
A plan by Switzerland’s right-wing People’s Party to cap the population at 10 million has the backing of almost half the country, according to a poll before an expected vote next year. The party, which has long campaigned against immigration, argues that too-fast population growth is overwhelming housing, transport and public services. The level of support comes despite the government urging voters to reject it, warning that strict curbs would damage the economy and prosperity, as Swiss companies depend on foreign workers. The poll by newspaper group Tamedia/20 Minuten and released yesterday showed that 48 percent of the population plan to vote
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
RELAXED: After talks on Ukraine and trade, the French president met with students while his wife visited pandas, after the pair parted ways with their Chinese counterparts French President Emmanuel Macron concluded his fourth state visit to China yesterday in Chengdu, striking a more relaxed note after tough discussions on Ukraine and trade with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) a day earlier. Far from the imposing Great Hall of the People in Beijing where the two leaders held talks, Xi and China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan (彭麗媛), showed Macron and his wife Brigitte around the centuries-old Dujiangyan Dam, a World Heritage Site set against the mountainous landscape of Sichuan Province. Macron was told through an interpreter about the ancient irrigation system, which dates back to the third century
RSS