White House says it will not co-operate with impeachment inquiry after blocking ambassador from testifying to Congress
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Donald Trump’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, has been blocked from testifying before Congress about his role in the Ukraine scandal, the president calling the impeachment inquiry a “kangaroo court” as he frustrates its bid to examine the damning text messages Mr Sondland exchanged with another envoy, Kurt Volker.
The president meanwhile remains under fire from senior Republicans over his announcement that the US will withdraw troops from northern Syria - leaving its allies against Isis in the Syrian Democratic Forces exposed to Turkish aggression – a move that was also branded “bats*** crazy” by ex-US national security adviser Susan Rice and that reportedly left his own senior military officials completely blindsided.
“Everyone was absolutely flabbergasted by this. I tell you that as a fact,” admiral James Stavridis told MSNBC. “Nobody saw it coming, and that is a real problem when you’re trying to conduct not only foreign policy... but also military operations.”
The president also feuded with the mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota today about security fees for a rally he'll hold in the city on Thursday.
Finally, the White House sent a letter to House leadership saying they would not cooperate with their impeachment inquiry. Ms Pelosi's office confirmed that she received it.
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Trump is getting satirical here at the expense of Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps more interesting is the admission he feels Elizabeth Warren poses a real threat to his re-election.
Lindsey Graham is inviting Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani to testify before his Senate committee on corruption in the Ukraine.
While that promises to be a show trial giving Rudy the chance to air his favourite conspiracy theories and atttack the press and Democrats before being given a clean bill of health by a partisan panel, the ex-NYC mayor certainly has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth...
Here's Clark Mindock's story.
Trump is resuming his new feud with Minneapolis Democrats after seeing an interview with a pro-Trump local police lieutenant on Fox & Friends.
These are the T-shirts in question.
But the city's major is already bored of it all.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff - still not imprisoned for treason, shockingly - has this say on the latest act of White House stonewalling, following Trump blocking Sondland from appearing.
"Not only is the Congress being deprived of his testimony... but we are also aware that the ambassador has text messages or emails on a personal device, which had been provided to the State Department, although we have requested those from the ambassador, and the State Department is withholding those messages as well," Schiff told reporters.
"Those messages are also deeply relevant to this investigation and the impeachment inquiry," he added.
Oliver Carroll has the inside story on Viktor Shokin, Ukraine's former chief prosecutor at the heart of the Biden conspiracy theory pushed by the Trump-Giuliani camp.
The British response to Trump's claim we're thrilled American troops are being pulled out of Syria, leaving the Kurdishs fighters of the SDF alone in the face of Turkish aggression?
"No idea where that came from."
Richard Hall elaborates.
Trump talks "constantly" behind the scenes about administering polygraph lie detector tests to his staff in the wake of major news events in a bid to flush out leakers, Politico reports.
"He’d be angry and ask, ‘Why can’t we stop these things?’” an ex-White House official told the publication.
“He wanted to polygraph every employee in the building to unearth who it was who spoke to the press,” said another.
So far, aides have managed to talk him out of such a paranoid step but Trump has apparently been obsessed with the idea since the earliest days of his presidency.
“It was something that was discussed and people were trying to placate the president, and trying to show that they were taking it as personally and just as seriously as he was,” another insider told Politico.
“Taking that line of, ‘Oh yeah, we have to polygraph people’ was a way to ingratiate themselves with him, but it wasn’t an idea that ever went anywhere because it was absurd,” they added.
Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar - a member of "The Squad" and an alt-right hate figure - has blamed the media for the collapse of her marriage.
A Trump retweet from earlier for broadcaster Todd Starnes, who left Fox Radio last week after a programme went out in which he discussed Democrats worshipping Moloch, the pagan god of child sacrifice, with far-right Christian pastor Robert Jeffress, the man who predicted a "Civil War-like fracture" in America should Trump be impeached.
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