Democrats, GOP to vie for impeachment narrative -- on TV

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Democrats, GOP to vie for impeachment narrative -- on TV

2019-11-12 06:55 Last Updated At：07:00

Impeachable or not?

Both Democrats and Republicans see the televised impeachment hearings starting this week as their first and best opportunity to shape public opinion about President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.

Democrats believe the testimony will paint a vivid picture of presidential misconduct. Republicans say it will demonstrate just how lacking the evidence is for impeachment.

They agree on one thing: The stakes as very high.

Democrats plan a narrow focus in the hearings, and a narrative retelling of Trump's pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democrats as his administration withheld military aid to an Eastern European ally on Russia's border.

All three witnesses this week — top Ukraine diplomat William Taylor, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — expressed concerns about Trump's efforts in closed-door depositions last month.

This time they'll be on live TV — and newscasts for days afterward — for all Americans to see and hear.

The Democrats see all three as highly credible, detail oriented and well positioned to tell that story to the American people.

"This is a very simple, straightforward act," said California Rep. Jackie Speier, a member of the House intelligence committee, which is conducting the hearings. "The president broke the law. He went on a telephone call with the president of Ukraine and said I have a favor, though, and then proceeded to ask for an investigation of his rival."

Democrats say their best evidence isn't even from the witnesses themselves, but from the rough transcript of that July call between Trump himself and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Trump asked for the "favor" of the investigations as Zelenskiy mentioned the military aid.

The witnesses have added detail on the circumstances of the call and have told investigators of concerns swirling in different corners of the administration as Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushed for the probes into Democratic rival Joe Biden and his family and into a possible Ukraine role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Taylor and Kent will testify on Wednesday, Yovanovitch on Friday. Yovanovitch plays a central role in the inquiry, as her ouster at Trump and Giuliani's direction in May raised questions throughout the U.S. diplomatic community. Taylor was brought in to replace her and navigated Trump's demands throughout the summer as the president brought his requests directly to Zelenskiy.

Kent is a senior State Department official overseeing Ukraine who told investigators that he understood, as other witnesses did, the military aid to be in exchange for the investigations — the quid pro quo that is at the heart of the Democratic probe.

Trump — who will surely be watching at the White House — has strongly denied any quid pro quo, and has bashed the diplomats by saying that none of them had firsthand knowledge of his thinking.

"It seems that nobody has any firsthand knowledge," the president said last week.

Republican questioning of the witnesses at the hearings is expected to turn on that point.

None of the witnesses has testified to relevant conversations that they had with Trump himself, and several of the accounts involve conversations they heard about from other people. While closed-door testimony from multiple witnesses has largely reinforced the same story, Republicans say that the Democrats don't have enough direct evidence.

GOP lawmakers are also expected to defend the president's words on the July call, which Trump has repeatedly called "perfect." They argue that those words don't explicitly show a quid pro quo.

The GOP grilling is expected to veer into other arguments as well. A proposed witness list from House Republicans includes some figures from former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation — a possible attempt by California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the intelligence panel, to turn the narrative to GOP concerns that officials at the Department of Justice were biased against Trump.

To make their best case, Republicans have moved one of Trump's top defenders, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, onto the intelligence panel temporarily. And one of Jordan's top aides on the Oversight panel, Steve Castor, is expected to question the witnesses at the top of the hearing alongside a top Democratic aide to the intelligence panel, former federal prosecutor Daniel Goldman.

While Trump teased on Saturday that he might release the transcript of an earlier call with the Ukrainian president on Tuesday, White House officials are not confirming that. Such a release could be an attempt to dampen the effects of the open hearings Wednesday, though the congressional inquiry has moved beyond just Trump's call with Zelenskiy.

As Republicans in Congress make their points through questioning at the Capitol, the White House will face its first major communication test since the hiring of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Treasury spokesman Tony Seyegh to work on what the West Wing calls "proactive impeachment messaging."

A White House official said Bondi and Seyegh have not started yet and may not be in place before the Wednesday hearings, owing to paperwork associated with entering White House employment.

Since the onset of the impeachment probe, Trump has largely limited his efforts to objecting to the process surrounding the investigation and attacking the career public servants involved as "Never Trumpers." But he has been under pressure from Republican allies to engage on the substance of the allegations against him — claims that will only grow more vivid once the public testimony begins.

White House officials are coordinating with the Republican National Committee and congressional Republicans on rapid response, aiming to shine a spotlight on moments they believe are exculpatory for the president or damaging to his opposition.

The RNC also will be coordinating surrogate bookings and local TV hits, with an emphasis on putting pressure on vulnerable House Democrats. Eric Trump will hold a conference call Thursday with local reporters across the country, with an emphasis on keeping pressure on those Trump-district Democrats.

But Trump's strategy has put Republicans who feel uncomfortable with his behavior in a difficult position, too. Some of those lawmakers have tried a different strategy.

"I believe it was inappropriate. I do not believe it was impeachable," said Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, of Trump's call for the Ukraine investigations of Democrats.

But Thornberry soon saw the limits of that approach — at least in the president's eyes.

"The call to the Ukrainian President was PERFECT," Trump tweeted shortly after Thornberry's television appearance. "Read the Transcript! There was NOTHING said that was in any way wrong. Republicans, don't be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!"

Speier and Thornberry both spoke on ABC's "This Week."

AP Writer Zeke Miller contributed.

Star witness Michael Cohen directly implicates Trump in testimony at hush money trial

2024-05-14 06:22 Last Updated At：06:31

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution's star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Cohen placed Trump at the center of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

“Stop this from getting out,” Cohen quoted Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels' account of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.

A similar episode occurred when Cohen alerted Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” Cohen said Trump told him. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sexual encounters with the two women.

Cohen is by far the prosecution's most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Daniels' turn on the stand, he nonetheless linked Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had previously seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Trump sat at the defense table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss's behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Cohen's testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose. Defense lawyers say the payments to Cohen were properly categorized as legal expenses.

Under questioning from a prosecutor, Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Daniels, an action he said he told Trump he was taking, he said it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

"I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, “if it stated: 'to pay off an adult film star for a non-disclosure agreement.’”

To establish Trump's familiarity with the payments, Cohen said Trump had promised to reimburse him and called him while the lawyer was on a December 2016 family vacation. Trump told him: “Don't worry about that other thing. I'm going to take care of it when you get back.”

The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as “legal expenses” over monthly installments, Cohen testified.

And though Trump's lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Cohen described Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign. He said Trump implored him to delay finalizing the Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because," Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Trump.

Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Trump ally that Pecker told Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer" where files related to Trump were kept. That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalized several weeks after that revelation, but Monday's testimony also centered on a deal earlier that fall with McDougal.

Cohen testified that he went to Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released," he said Trump told him.

Trump checked in with Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Cohen said. Pecker responded: "'We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,’” Cohen testified.

Cohen also said he was with Trump as Trump spoke to Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David stated it would cost $150,000 to control the story,” Cohen said. He quoted Trump as saying: “No problem, I’ll take care of it," meaning that the payments would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Trump's endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump's behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Defense lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he's an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”

Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Cohen's past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Cohen's testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Daniels and McDougal, as well as Pecker and Daniels.

Cohen's role as star prosecution witness further cements the disintegration of a mutually beneficial relationship. After Cohen's home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Trump showered him with affection on social media, praising him as a “fine person with a wonderful family” and predicting — incorrectly — that Cohen would not "flip."

Months later, Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty that August to federal campaign-finance charges in which he implicated Trump. By that point, the relationship was irrevocably broken, with Trump posting on the social media platform then known as Twitter: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Trump's behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.