Meanwhile, it was learned Thursday that a second official from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was present when U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke on a July 26 phone call from Ukraine with Trump that more directly ties the president to his administration’s effort to pressure Ukraine’s new leadership.
Earlier Thursday, Trump asserted that “normal people” would close the case on his impeachment after Wednesday’s nationally televised hearing.
●Impeachment hearings begin with new evidence of phone call implicating Trump in Ukraine controversy.
●Pelosi calls Trump’s actions ‘bribery’ as Democrats sharpen case for impeachment.
●Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries.
●Republicans’ conspiracy theories slam into sworn testimony in collision of divergent worlds.
Who’s involved in the impeachment inquiry | Key documents related to the inquiry | What’s next in the inquiry
Trump claims GOP senators are benefiting politically from impeachment
Trump claimed Republican senators have told him they want to prolong the impeachment process because it is benefiting them politically.
Trump told his supporters at a political rally that the senators have said, “Sir, our poll numbers are going through the roof, do you think we could keep this going?’ I said, ‘Do me a favor, let’s get it ended.’ They said, ‘But let’s keep it going, President, it’s so great.’”
Recent polls have shown Democrats with an advantage over Republicans on congressional generic ballots since the impeachment inquiry began.
Colby Itkowitz
Trump mocks State Department witnesses
Trump railed against the impeachment inquiry at the beginning of a political rally in Louisiana Thursday night, mocking the two career diplomats who testified for their silence when asked what is impeachable about Trump’s actions.
“How about when they asked these two Never Trumpers, ‘what exactly do you impeach him for?’ They went like, “What?” Trump said.
Several times during Wednesday’s public hearing, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr., said he was there to present the information he had and not to weigh in on whether to impeach Trump.
Colby Itkowitz
Biden says impeachment hearing made clear he ‘didn’t do a damn thing wrong’
Biden, in his first comments about the impeachment inquiry since Wednesday’s hearing, responded defensively, saying it further proved he and his son did nothing wrong.
“It made it clear from the beginning — I didn’t do a damn thing wrong. I did my job,” Biden said. “I did what the rest of the world wanted me to do and my son didn’t do a damn thing wrong.”
“This guy has done something really bad, he’s invited three foreign governments to interfere in the election process,” Biden continued, referring to Trump. “It’s an impeachable offense.”
Colby Itkowitz
OMB official agrees to testify on Saturday
A longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to break ranks and testify Saturday in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, potentially filling in important details on the hold-up of military aid to Ukraine.
Mark Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell T. Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear.
He was among the career staffers who raised questions about the hold-up on the military aid to Ukraine, people familiar with the matter said, and his role gave him responsibility for signing the documents required to hold it up.
Read more here.
Erica Werner
President Clinton offers Trump advice on handling impeachment
Former president Bill Clinton, the only other living person who knows what it is like to be president and face impeachment, said the White House’s assertion that the investigation is halting progress on policy is “just an excuse.”
Clinton, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper about gun control after Thursday’s school shooting, said Trump should do as Clinton did during his impeachment and keep focused on the work.
“Look, you got hired to do a job. … Every day’s an opportunity to make something good happen,” Clinton said. “And I would say, ‘I’ve got lawyers and staff people handling this impeachment inquiry and they should just have at it. Meanwhile, I’m going to work for the American people.’ That’s what I would do.”
Colby Itkowitz
Trump asks Supreme Court to shield his tax returns from prosecutors, setting up historic separation-of-powers showdown
Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to stop a prosecutor’s investigation of his personal finances, a bold assertion of presidential power that seeks a landmark decision from the nation’s highest court.
The filing by the president’s private lawyers represents a historic moment that tests the court’s independence and highlights the Constitution’s separation-of-powers design. It also marks a new phase in the investigations that have dogged Trump throughout his presidency and have culminated in an impeachment inquiry.
Read more here.
Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow
Trump takes no questions from reporters as he departs for Louisiana
Trump left the White House shortly before 5 p.m. and boarded Marine One. He did not stop to take questions from reporters, as he often does before departing Washington.
Felicia Sonmez
Trump meets with Barr, Cipollone before White House departure
Trump was scheduled to leave the White House shortly after 4 p.m. for a “Keep America Great” rally in Louisiana. But he still had not left by 4:45 p.m., and reporters saw him speaking inside the Oval Office with officials including Attorney General William P. Barr, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Felicia Sonmez
Cramer says Senate trial should go past New Hampshire primary ‘just for the fun of it’
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said that he thinks the Senate should take its time with a potential impeachment trial, musing that it should go past the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary “just for the fun of it.”
Several of the Democratic presidential contenders are members of the Senate, and drawing out the impeachment trial could put them in the difficult position of having to choose between being present for the proceedings or hitting the campaign trail.
“I’ve always felt like, if our process is the only process that airs all of the facts, or at least both sides of the story, then we ought to at least have some of that, and maybe we could go somewhere beyond the New Hampshire primary, just for the fun of it,” Cramer said. “But the president didn’t have an opinion about it, interestingly, to this point. He said, you know, ‘You guys will have to decide that.’ ”
Seung Min Kim
Trump shows GOP senators copy of first Zelensky call
Over lunch at the White House, Trump showed a group of Republican senators a rough transcript of a call he had with Zelenksy in April to congratulate the Ukrainian president on his election victory.
Trump shared the contents of the call with the senators — who will be among his jurors if the case against him moves to a Senate trial — ahead of releasing it publicly, which he had said he’d do by Thursday.
Witnesses who heard the call have testified in closed-door depositions that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the April conversation, which is what made the July call notable.
Cramer, who was at the lunch with Trump, said it was a very short call.
“There’s one meaty page. … The first page is kind of loose, if you will, like, ‘Mr. President, congratulations on the victory.’ … It’s pretty benign,” Cramer said.
Seung Min Kim
A second State Department official overheard Trump’s call with E.U. envoy discussing Ukraine and ‘investigations’
A second official from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was present when U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke on a July 26 phone call from Ukraine with Trump that more directly ties the president to his administration’s effort this year to pressure Ukraine’s new leadership into publicly committing to investigate Biden.
Suriya Jayanti, a Foreign Service officer based at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, overheard the phone call and also witnessed Sondland’s other interactions during his trip to Ukraine, where the call took place in a restaurant, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter involved in the impeachment proceedings.
Jayanti was the embassy official tasked with accompanying Sondland throughout the day of the call.
It became clear Wednesday that at least one embassy staffer, David Holmes, overheard Sondland on the call in Ukraine. He is slated to testify behind closed doors in the House impeachment probe Friday.
Jayanti’s presence near Sondland during the call in Ukraine was first reported by the Associated Press.
Trump has said he doesn’t remember the call, which William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, revealed during testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
After the call, according to Taylor, Sondland told one of the embassy staffers that Trump cared more about the Ukrainians committing to investigate Biden than other policy matters involving the country.
Paul Sonne
Rep. King offers ‘clues’ to the whistleblower’s identity with four photos shared on Twitter
With a tweet on Thursday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a lawmaker prone to controversy, seemingly suggested that he knows the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint has sparked the impeachment inquiry against Trump.
In his tweet, King referenced comments from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) that he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower. “@RepAdamSchiff here are four strong clues,” King wrote.
The “clues” were four photos of the same man posing with prominent Democrats. But to many of Twitter, it was instantly apparent that the man in the photos didn’t match the description of the whistleblower as a U.S. intelligence official.
It was, in fact, Alexander Soros, the 34-year-old son of George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist. Neither Soros is a member of the U.S. intelligence community.
A spokesman for King did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether he was deliberating implying Alexander Soros is the whistleblower. Shortly afterward, King deleted the tweet and posted pictures of another individual.
In a statement, Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for the Open Society Foundations, an international grant-making network where Alexander Soros serves as deputy chairman, said King was “circulating false information.”
“[Alexander Soros] is not the whistleblower, and any attempt to identify the whistleblower is a violation of protections put in place to help people in government root out waste, fraud and abuse,” Silber said. “Rep. King should know better, but as a member of Congress with a long established history of white nationalism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia — whose behavior is so abhorrent House Republican leaders stripped him of his committee assignments — our expectations of his suddenly showing any principles are low.”
John Wagner
McCarthy claims without evidence that Schiff was lying about not knowing whistleblower’s identity
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) of lying when he said Wednesday that he does not know the identity of the whistleblower.
Pressed for evidence to back up his claim, McCarthy did not directly answer the question but instead repeatedly accused Schiff of lying.
“I think Adam Schiff has lied numerous times,” McCarthy told reporters at his weekly news conference.
Schiff’s staff met with the whistleblower early on, but Schiff said Wednesday that he himself did not and is unaware of the person’s identity.
McCarthy also contended that Wednesday’s hearing produced no new evidence. Asked how Republicans can simultaneously complain that they are hearing only “secondhand” witnesses while supporting the White House’s efforts to block those closer to Trump from appearing, McCarthy again pointed to the transcript of Trump’s July call with Zelensky.
“We have all the information that we need,” McCarthy said.
Felicia Sonmez and John Wagner
Pelosi says testimony of diplomats ‘corroborated evidence of bribery’
Pelosi used the word “bribery” Thursday to describe Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, going further than she previously has done in outlining House Democrats’ accusations against the president.
Wednesday’s testimony by acting ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent corroborated “evidence of bribery” and supported allegations that Trump violated his oath of office, Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.
Her comment comes two days after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) also floated the idea that Trump committed bribery.
“On the basis of what the witnesses have had to say so far, there are any number of potentially impeachable offenses, including bribery, including high crimes and misdemeanors,” Schiff said in an interview with NPR on Tuesday.
At her news conference, Pelosi also forcefully pushed back against the efforts by Trump and his allies to dismiss the testimony of Kent and Taylor as “secondhand.”
“That is such a fraudulent proposition put forward by the Republicans,” Pelosi said. “We are not here to be manipulated by the obstruction of justice of the administration.”
Felicia Sonmez
Trump demands to hear from whistleblower
Trump returned to Twitter on Thursday morning to weigh in on the impeachment inquiry, including a four-word question: “Where’s the Fake Whistleblower?”
Democratic leaders have said it is no longer necessary to hear from the whistleblower whose identity sparked the impeachment inquiry because key aspects of his complaint have been corroborated by other witnesses.
Trump and his Republican allies have advocated that the whistleblower testify in a public hearing.
John Wagner
Sessions says impeachment inquiry is ‘really an abuse of the process’
In an interview on Fox News, former attorney general Jeff Sessions criticized the impeachment inquiry, calling it “really an abuse of the process.”
“To drag this country through such a process, I do not believe is justified,” said Sessions, who recently announced that he is running for his former Senate seat in Alabama.
Sessions and Trump notoriously clashed over the then-attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Sessions said Thursday he has no regrets about recusing himself, even though he earned Trump’s ire by doing so.
“I believe I did the right thing,” Sessions said, noting that Democrats “don’t even raise” details from the Russia investigation anymore as an impeachment charge.
Sessions said that it’s “been some time” since he’s spoken to Trump, but he added that he’s “certainly going to hope” the president will endorse him despite their differences. He noted that he was Trump’s first supporter in the Senate, “and if I go back to the Senate, I can tell you, I’ll be his No. 1 supporter.”
“He’s a strong-willed person,” Sessions said of Trump. “He speaks his mind when he’s concerned about something. But he also has a history of getting back in good relationship with people he’s had a disagreement with before.”
Felicia Sonmez
Ukraine’s foreign minister says no mention of investigation pressure from Sondland
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko says his conversations with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, did not include explicit mention linking U.S. military aid with possible investigations of the Bidens.
Prystaiko, however, commented only on his direct interactions with Sondland, whose reported phone call with Trump in late July has emerged as a new and potentially important element in the impeachment inquiries.
“Ambassador Sondland did not tell us, and certainly did not tell me, about a connection between the assistance and the investigations. You should ask him,” Prystaiko was quoted as saying by the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
On Wednesday the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., testified that a member of his staff overheard Trump referring to “the investigations” in a telephone call with Sondland on July 26. That was a day after the call between Trump and Zelensky, in which Trump had pressed for investigations into former vice president Biden and his son Hunter.
Brian Murphy
Conway says Democrats trying to ‘interfere’ in 2020 election
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Thursday that the impeachment inquiry amounts to an attempt by Democrats to “interfere” in the 2020 election as she assessed Wednesday’s hearing during a television appearance.
“They can’t get him at the ballot box,” Conway said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” “They’re trying to undo a democratically elected president from three years ago, and they’re trying to interfere — yes, I said it — interfere in the next election, and I think America’s smarter than that.”
Conway argued that the Democratic-led inquiry is a continuation of the investigation into Russian election interference by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and spoke disparagingly about Mueller’s performance at a congressional hearing regarding his findings.
“This entire inquiry is just a continuation of the Russia investigation that went nowhere, the Mueller report, and then the sequel, Mueller himself, who was stumbling and bumbling through his testimony,” Conway said. “He was the original star witness of the summer that was supposed to undo the president.”
John Wagner
Trump says ‘normal people’ would close the case on impeachment
Trump contended early Thursday morning that testimony offered during the first open hearing of his impeachment inquiry on Wednesday would be sufficient for “normal people” to close the case.
In a morning tweet, Trump cited an exchange between Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) and the two career diplomats — acting ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent — who testified on Wednesday.
During his allotted time for questioning, Ratcliffe pressed the pair on what “impeachable offense” was contained in the rough transcript of Trump’s July call with Zelensky in which he pressed Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
After a brief pause, Taylor said when it comes to impeachment, “I’m not here to take one side or the other. That’s your determination.”
“That is not what either of us are here to do,” Taylor added. “That is your job.”
In his tweet, Trump characterized the response of the two diplomats to Ratcliffe’s question this way: “Both stared straight ahead with a blank look on their face, remained silent, & were unable to answer the question.”
“That would be the end of a case run by normal people! — but not Shifty!,” Trump asserted, referring to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).
Throughout the hearing, both Taylor and Kent expressed concerns about Trump using his office to advance his political interests.
Trump also retweeted comments from several GOP allies, including Rep. Mark Meadows (N.C.), who characterized Wednesday’s proceedings as “a MAJOR setback for the unfounded impeachment fantasy.”
John Wagner
Key testimony scheduled for Friday
House investigators have no hearings scheduled Thursday, but Friday could be another key day in the probe, with both public and private testimony.
Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine who was recalled earlier this year by Trump, is scheduled to appear at an open hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.
She said in an Oct. 11 deposition that she was the target of a shadow campaign to orchestrate her removal that involved Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and Ukrainian officials suspected of fostering corruption, according to a transcript.
In her testimony, Yovanovitch said that she remained worried that she would be a target of retaliation by Trump, who referred to her in his July 25 phone call with Zelensky as “bad news” and someone who was “going to go through some things.”
House investigators also expect to hear in a closed-door session Friday from David Holmes, the counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
He is the embassy staffer referred to Wednesday in testimony by William B. Taylor Jr., acting ambassador to Ukraine. Taylor said the staffer overheard a July phone call in which Trump asked U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about “the investigations” sought from Ukraine into political rivals.
The revelation of that call potentially implicates Trump more directly in a scheme to center U.S. policy toward Ukraine on political investigations.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had no recollection of the call.
John Wagner
White House could release transcript of earlier Zelensky call
The White House could release a transcript Thursday of a call between Trump and Zelensky that took place in April, shortly after Zelensky had been elected president.
That’s a few months before the July call that has been central to the impeachment inquiry in which Trump pressed Zelensky for investigations that could benefit him politically at a time when U.S. military aid was being withheld from Ukraine.
Witnesses in the impeachment probe familiar with the first call have described it as relatively innocuous.
The timetable for releasing the transcript of the call has been pushed back several times, but on Wednesday Trump told reporters it was coming soon.
“I’m going to be releasing — I think on Thursday — a second call, which actually, was the first of the two,” Trump said at a White House news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
John Wagner
Trump heading to Louisiana for campaign rally
A day after the first open hearing in his impeachment inquiry, Trump is heading to Louisiana for a “Keep America Great” rally.
Trump has used previous rallies to air his grievances about the impeachment process and level attacks on the Democrats leading it.
Trump’s trip to Bossier City, La., is designed to give a boost to Republican Eddie Rispone in the Louisiana governor’s race. He is trying to unseat Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) in a Nov. 16 runoff election.
John Wagner
Trump shares assessment of hearings as ‘day of shame’
Trump fired of a spate of late-night tweets and retweets on Wednesday, including one in which he shared that the evangelist Franklin Graham had called the first open hearings in the impeachment inquiry “a day of shame for America.”
“Thank you @FranklinGraham,” Trump wrote in the tweet. “It is a time of ‘shame’ for our Country. The Democrats know what they are doing is wrong!”
Other Trump tweets and retweets included clips from the hearing of moments Republicans considered favorable to them. Another congratulated his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., for sales of his new book.
John Wagner