Trump news: Senate impeachment trial 'to begin next week' as Democrats prepare for latest 2020 debate
Mitch McConnell picks a date for Senate proceedings as opponents demand 'fair trial'
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Donald Trump has been accused of “engaging in hate speech against an entire religion” after retweeting a meme of senior Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in Muslim dress as press secretary Stephanie Grisham explained he posted it to attack the opposition for “almost taking the side of terrorists” in the Iran crisis.
A US cybersecurity firm has meanwhile alleged that Russian military agents successfully hacked Ukrainian gas company Burisma — at the heart of the impeachment inquiry over its ties to Hunter Biden, son of Mr Trump’s leading 2020 opponent Joe Biden — suggesting it attempted to steal emails with a view to again influencing an American presidential election.
On impeachment, Republicans in the Senate appear to be backing down from the idea of dismissing the two articles against the president outright after admitting they do not have the votes to see through such a controversial move.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell instead has announced that the Senate will plan to begin the president's impeachment trial on 21 January, provided that House Democrats send articles of impeachment and assign case managers to the Senate proceedings on Wednesday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not get assurance from the Republican leader who has previously gloated about his coordination with the White House and pledged support for dismissing the articles outright.
Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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Mr McConnell also did not say whether the Senate will bring up witnesses or evidence for the trial, saying instead he'll determine whether to do that "at the appropriate time".
Speaker Pelosi said a Senate dismissal of the charges against the president amounts to a "pure political cover-up".
Meanwhile, Democrats are pressuring the White House to release billions of dollars in aid to Puerto Rico, still suffering from 2017 hurricanes in addition to the ongoing earthquakes that have displaced thousands of people, as reports emerge that the president is considering diverting billions from the Pentagon to pay for his US-Mexico border wall.
Democrats also announced an investigation into the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" anti-immigration measure at the border, which "has morphed into a policy whereby refugees and asylum seekers are being kept in Mexico indefinitely and without due process or access to counsel".
Follow live coverage as it happened:
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Trump under fire over Islamophobic meme attacking senior Democrats
Donald Trump has been accused of “engaging in hate speech against an entire religion” after retweeting a meme of senior Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in Muslim dress as press secretary Stephanie Grisham explained he posted it to attack the opposition for “almost taking the side of terrorists” in the Iran crisis.
While Speaker Pelosi has so far maintained a dignified silence on the tweet, Senate minority leader Schumer has expressed his disgust:
The post has attracted all manner of criticism, with the former US ambassador to Qatar Dana Shell Smith saying the racist equation of Islam with terrorism "is in our name" and "on all of us".
Ex-Defence Department Middle East adviser Jasmine El-Gamal added it was "deeply damaging to Muslims in the US" and to "ALL Americans" while Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League said the president had "elevated... repulsive anti-Muslim bigotry".
The president has also faced further calls for Twitter to remove his account after he also tweeted a graphic picture of a dead body on the same day but the Silicon Valley tech giant has previously shown reluctance to act.
Here's Alex Woodward's report.
Russia accused of hacking Ukrainian gas firm at centre of impeachment inquiry
A US cybersecurity firm has alleged that Russian military agents successfully hacked Ukrainian gas company Burisma - at the heart if the impeachment inquiry over its ties to Hunter Biden, son of Trump’s leading 2020 opponent Joe Biden - suggesting it attempted to steal emails with a view to again influencing an American presidential election.
The operatives launched a phishing campaign in early November aimed at stealing the login credentials for Burisma employees, according to an eight-page report from Area 1 Security, a Silicon Valley company that specialises in email security set up ex-National Security Agency employee Oren Falkowitz.
The House of Representatives, you will recall, impeached Trump in December for abusing the power of his office by attempting to enlist the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden Sr ahead of the 2020 election over his intervention in the country over corruption concerns while serving as US vice president in 2016.
Russian hackers from the same military intelligence unit that Area 1 said was behind the operation have been indicted for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign during the 2016 presidential race. Stolen emails were released online at the time by Russian agents and WikiLeaks in an effort to favour Trump, special counsel Robert Mueller determined in his investigation last year.
Area 1 discovered the phishing campaign by the Russian military intelligence unit, known as the GRU, on New Year's Eve, Falkowitz said. In the report, he said the GRU agents used fake, lookalike domains in the phishing campaign designed to mimic real Burisma subsidiaries. The cybersecurity researchers said the operation targeting Burisma used tactics, techniques and procedures that GRU agents had used repeatedly in other phishing operations. Area 1 says it has been tracking the Russian agents for several years.
Phished credentials allow attackers both to rifle through a victim's stored email and masquerade as that person. Area 1 said its researchers connected the phishing campaign targeting Burisma to another that targeted a media organisation founded by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In phishing, an attacker uses a targeted email to lure a target to a fake site that resembles a familiar one. There, unwitting victims enter their usernames and passwords, which the hackers then harvest. In this case, the Russian military agents, from a group security researchers call "Fancy Bear," peppered Burisma employees with emails designed to look like internal messages.
For some timely analysis on this story, let's turn to our unofficial security correspondent Better Midler:
You prefer an expert? Oh all right then - here's Ollie Carroll in Moscow.
Trump rebuffed by Melania but befriends Vince Vaughn at College Football Playoff in New Orleans
The Trumps attended the College Football Playoff National Championship game between the Clemson Tigers and Louisiana State University (LSU) at the Mercedes Benz Superdome in New Orleans last night.
Despite his impeachment, despite his almost crashing the US into a fresh war in the Middle East within days of the new year starting and despite the open sewer that is his Twitter account, the president was warmly greeted by the crowd when he took to the field accompanied by his wife Melania for the national anthem.
Asked later by an ABC reporter which team he was supporting, Trump fudged his answer in cowardly fashion and said simply "both", giving a thumbs-up.
During the game - won by LSU - the president found himself sat alongside Hollywood actor Vince Vaughn and the pair shook hands and chatted amicably.
Vaughn's name is trending on Twitter at the time of writing, seemingly suggesting the good folk of the online community are as disgusted by the display as they were when Ellen DeGeneres was pictured hanging out with George W Bush at a Dallas Cowboys game in Texas last October.
But perhaps the most telling episode of the night came when Melania, dressed like an escaped Replicant, again refused to hold her husband's hand, leaving The Donald to adjust his lapels in embarrassed, Brentian fashion.
Here's Adam White on Vince Vaughn.
Republican senators back down from dismissing articles of impeachment over lack of votes
On impeachment, Republicans in the Senate appear to be backing down from the idea of dismissing the twin articles against the president outright after admitting they do not have the votes to see through such a controversial move.
"I think our members generally are not interested in a motion to dismiss... Certainly there aren't 51 votes for a motion to dismiss," Missouri senator Roy Blunt told reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday after emerging from a behind-closed-doors meeting with party leaders.
The president had raised the prospect of that happening over the weekend, saying holding a trial on the House's charge that he abused the powers of his office and obstructed Congress would mean "giving credence" to a process he insists is a partisan "Witch Hunt" (as all those damning public hearings with national security experts before Christmas indicate, it isn't).
Blunt's fellow Missouri Republican, Josh Hawley, had put forward a proposal on changing Senate rules to allow the upper chamber to dismiss the articles if Speaker Pelosi does not end her stalling and hand them over within 25 days, which majority leader Mitch McConnell appeared prepared to back, but that appears to have now lost traction as it became clear the votes weren't there to push it over the line.
GOP senators say they are open to new witnesses at Senate impeachment trial
Veteran Maine Republican Susan Collins signalled yestetday that she would be in favour of hearing from new witnesses at the president's impeachment trial but would prefer to wait until the opening statements have been heard in the case.
"Obviously I would not be advocating for language to be included in the governing resolution if I did not anticipate at the end of hearing the case presented, and the Q&A, that there might be a need for more information," she commented, rather convolutedly.
"I tend to like information," she said, when pressed on her track record of calling for witnesses in the Bill Clinton impeachment and in 2018's explosive Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing, before disappearing, exasperated, into an elevator, according to CNN.
"I've been working to make sure that we will have a process so that we can take a vote on whether or not we need additional information, and yes that would include witnesses," her colleague, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, added.
Utah senator and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney has also backed greater transparency and new witness calls.
"I would like to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses but at the same time I'm comfortable with the Clinton impeachment model when we have opening arguments first and then we have a vote on whether to have witnesses," he said.
Those three dissenting voices would need to be added by a fourth to swing control of the process back towards Chuck Schumer and company, with the retiring Lamar Alexander of Tennessee one possibility according to CNN.
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Lev Parnas lawyer pitches client as impeachment witness with MC Hammer video
In addition to the aforementioned Bolton, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and several key budget officials, the Senate might also like to hear from Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas.
His lawyer, who says he has communications to share, has pitched his client in a new video on social media, improbably set to MC Hammer's classic "U Can't Touch This".
Here's a little more from Indy100.
Trump insists Iran rhetoric 'totally consistent'
Before jetting out for Lousiana, Trump insisted that his administration's messaging on the rationale for brinking the US to the brink of war with Iran by assassinating Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani had been "totally consistent".
His secretary of state Mike Pompeo said at the outset 10 days ago that Soleimani posed an "imminent threat" to America and the president himself told Laura Ingraham of Fox on Friday night that the late general had intended to attack four US embassies in the Middle East (without offering any evidence or further specifics), only for defence secretary Mark Esper to admit on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday that he hadn't seen any intel to back up such a claim.
We also learned yesterday that Trump first approved the order for Soleimani's killing back in June in response to the downing of an unmanned US surveillance drone near the Strait of Hormuz, indicating it had been on the back burner for some time.
Trump is clearly attempting to brush past the issue now, tweeting this yesterday:
But for many, not least the members of his own party like Mike Lee and Rand Paul who were angered by the administration's vague but authoritarian briefing practices, this simply isn't good enough.
“This administration already has a credibility problem and President Trump has a pretty casual relationship with the truth,” William Inboden, who served on George W Bush’s National Security Council, told The Hill.
“So even when he does what I would regard as the right thing or a good policy decision with Soleimani, he then hurts himself and widens the credibility gap with these shifting explanations.”
UK, France and Germany trigger Iran nuclear deal dispute action
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal is in fresh trouble after the UK and other EU powers triggered a"‘dispute mechanism" in protest at Tehran’s breaches of the agreement. The move brings the bloc a step closer to reimposing sanctions if the row cannot be resolved and is brought back to the UN Security Council.
It comes soon after British prime minister Boris Johnson said the agreement should be scrapped and replaced with a better “Trump deal”, which the US president would negotiate.
Here's Rob Merrick's report.
Trump planning to divert additional $7.2bn from Pentagon to border wall
The White House is about to shift an additional $7.2bn (£5.5bn) in funding from the Pentagon to pay for Trump's border wall, according to The Washington Post, with the money coming from counter drug trafficking measures and military construction projects.
That's enough to build 880 more miles of the sucker, a process that will take until 2022 to realise and sees the president expressing confidence in his re-election to a second term.
Remember when he was going to get Mexico to pay for this?
The news follows hot on the heels of this appeals court win last week...
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