The Latest on President Donald Trump and the House impeachment inquiry (all times local):
1:45 p.m.
President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is acknowledging he earned $500,000 for work for a company run by a business associate who has been charged with federal campaign finance violations.
Giuliani says he received two payments totaling $500,000 related to the work for Lev Parnas' company, Fraud Guarantee, which is based in Boca Raton, Florida.
Giuliani says he was hired to consult on Fraud Guarantee's technologies and provide legal advice on regulatory issues, and that he is confident the money came from a "domestic source."
Giuliani also is playing down the $500,000 total, saying he's had larger contracts with other clients.
Parnas and an associate were arrested last week trying to board an international flight. The charges against them relate to a $325,000 donation to a group supporting Trump's reelection.
The men had key roles in Giuliani's efforts to launch a Ukrainian corruption investigation against Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The payments were first reported by Reuters.
12:05 a.m.
A former White House adviser on Russia has told House impeachment investigators that she had strongly and repeatedly objected to the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
A person familiar with Monday's behind-closed-doors testimony of Fiona Hill described her testimony to The Associated Press.
Yovanovitch herself testified last week that President Donald Trump pressured the State Department to fire her.
Hill testified for more than 10 hours Monday in the Democratic inquiry. At issue are Trump's pleas to Ukrainian officials for investigations into political rival Joe Biden's family and into the country's involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
Five more private interviews are scheduled this week, mostly with State Department officials, though it's unclear if all will appear after Trump declared he wouldn't cooperate with the probe.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.
While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.
At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.
He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.
In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.
The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.
FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
