Schiff says intelligence community withholding documents on Ukraine
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday that the National Security Agency is withholding "potentially relevant documents" from Congress regarding Ukraine just as President Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial is set to start.
"The intelligence community is beginning to withhold documents from Congress on the issue of Ukraine," Schiff told ABC's "This Week." "They appear to be succumbing to pressure from the administration. The NSA in particular is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial."
"That is deeply concerning," Schiff continued. "And there are signs that the CIA may be on the same tragic course. We are counting on the intelligence community not only to speak truth to power but to resist pressure from the administration to withhold information from Congress because the administration fears that they incriminate them."
Perdue on Lev Parnas: 'This is a distraction'
Trump forced to take a back seat in his impeachment defense as Senate trial begins
WASHINGTON — In what will be one of the most crucial moments of his presidency, Donald Trump will find himself in a position he’s proven uncomfortable with — having to take a back seat as someone else mounts his public defense.
With just days until opening arguments in his Senate impeachment trial, the president was still his own most visible and vocal defender. "I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!" he tweeted on Thursday. “They’re trying to impeach the son of a bitch, can you believe that?” he complained Friday to Louisiana State University's NCAA football champion team during their White House visit.
But as that trial begins in earnest on Tuesday, Trump will be handing over the reins for one of the most crucial moments of his presidency to a team of his staunchest cable TV legal defenders, including former independent counsel Ken Starr, famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, and former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.
House managers cite 'overwhelming' evidence against Trump in their brief to Senate
House managers in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump filed their brief to the Senate on Saturday outlining a "compelling case" against Trump, who will deliver his own brief to the chamber on Monday.
The House managers, seven Democratic congressional leaders who will try the case against Trump during the Senate trial starting next week, say in the briefthat the evidence against Trump is "overwhelming" and proves he used his official power to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the upcoming 2020 election.
It details instances in which members of Trump's internal circle defied congressional subpoenas and refused to cooperate with a House investigation. The House managers called Trump's behavior "the Framers' worst nightmare" and said Trump's actions present a "danger to our democratic processes."
Who is Robert Hyde? The latest character in the Trump impeachment saga has a wild backstory
Robert Hyde once said he was "never really into politics" until Donald Trump ran for president, but thanks to the impeachment saga, the two men may be inextricably linked.
Democrats are calling for an investigation into the actions of Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate and onetime landscaper, after the emergence of menacing-sounding messages he traded with Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
In the WhatsApp messages, which House Democrats released Tuesday night, Hyde, who is running for Congress in Connecticut, indicated that he was tracking the movements of Marie Yovanovitch in Kyiv when she was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Giuliani had been pushing to have Yovanovitch pulled from her post because he saw her as an impediment in his bid to get the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a Trump rival.
"They are moving her tomorrow," Hyde said in a message to Parnas on March 25.
Trump lawyer dismisses new evidence, including photos of the president with Lev Parnas
Less than 12 hours after the White House announced President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial defense team, new questions have emerged about connections between some of his lawyers and figures at the center of the Ukraine investigation.
A document dump from the House Judiciary Committee overnight Friday included more information about Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who is currently under federal indictment for his alleged role in the political pressure campaign in Ukraine.
The released documents included photos of Parnas with President Trump as well as shots of him with Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who is among the lawyers on the president's impeachment team.
Bondi in an interview on NBC's "TODAY" on Saturday morning dismissed the photos.