The whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a registered Democrat who had a “prior working relationship with a current 2020 Democratic presidential contender,” a source familiar with the matter tells CBS News.
The nature of the “prior working relationship” remains unclear.
When asked if he was concerned that Islamic State fighters would be able to escape because of Turkey’s military operation in Syria, Trump predicted that the militants would not travel to the United States, CBS News reports.
Said Trump: “They’re going to be escaping to Europe.”
His comment was apparently meant to reassure Americans.
Sen. Bernie Sanders “tamped down on speculation that he would slow his presidential campaign after he suffered a heart attack last week, saying he plans to compete as vigorously as ever for the 2020 Democratic nomination,” NBC News reports.
Said Sanders: “I misspoke the other day, I said a word I should not have said and media drives me a little bit nuts to make a big deal about it. We’re going to get back into the groove of a very vigorous campaign, I love doing rallies and I love doing town meetings.”
He added: “I want to start off slower and build up and build up and build up.”
Rudy Giuliani said he believes Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will call Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden to testify before his panel about corruption in Ukraine, The Hill reports.
Graham told reporters weeks ago that he had no intention of bringing the Bidens in, but Giuliani said he believed that position had changed amid an escalating Democratic impeachment effort.
CNN: “Not only is Drudge’s website aggressively covering the impeachment news, it is doing so by featuring commentary from some of the president’s fiercest critics or the harshest criticism of him.”
CBS News has the full contents of what appears to be a memo written by the whistleblower one day after President Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July.
“The official asserted that the President used the call to persuade Ukrainian authorities to investigate his political rivals, chiefly former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter. The official stated that there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official’s view, the President had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own reelection bid in 2020.”
A senior adviser to the Turkish president told CNN that President Trump knew in advance “precisely” the scope of the military operation in northern Syria.
“The Department of Justice on Wednesday announced an indictment of Henry Kyle Frese, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst prosecutors say allegedly leaked classified information to two journalists,” ABC News reports.
“According to a court filing in the Eastern District of Virginia, between 2018 and 2019 Frese allegedly provided ‘top secret’ intelligence reports regarding ‘a foreign country’s weapons systems’ to a journalist he lived with and who prosecutors say he was involved with romantically.”
Three times in a row yesterday, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) dodged questions about whether it’s appropriate for a president to ask a foreign power to investigate a political rival, Iowa Starting Line reports.
Joe Biden for the first time said President Trump should be impeached, The Hill reports.
Said Biden: “Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts. He should be impeached.”
He added: “We all laughed when he said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and get away with it. It’s no joke. He’s shooting holes in the Constitution, and we cannot let him get away with it.”
Biden had previously avoided specifically saying how he would vote on impeachment.
Playbook: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi has led a fairly unified Democratic charge toward impeachment. She’s said consistently that Democrats don’t need a formal vote to move forward, but a few cracks have started to show. Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat who represents a district in Northern California, was on CNN this morning and said Democrats should hold a formal impeachment inquiry vote, as Republicans have been demanding. He predicted that’s what would eventually happen.”
“A final decision will be made by Pelosi, who hasn’t ruled it out. But Pelosi advisers continue to argue that it’s unnecessary. They also point out that it was months before the House engaged in a similar vote during the Nixon impeachment process. And, even if Pelosi does move to vote on a formal impeachment inquiry, it’s unclear if the White House would participate. On a conference call Tuesday night, a senior administration official would not commit to cooperating with Democrats.”
“I cannot fathom how any self-respecting member of the bar could affix his name to this letter. It’s pure hackery, and it disgraces the profession.”
— George Conway, on Twitter, reacting to the White House’s letter to House Democrats refusing any cooperation with their impeachment probe.
“American diplomats who had pushed for the Trump administration to restore security funding to Ukraine were advised by the White House to play down the release of the money when it was finally approved,” the New York Times reports.
Said Brad Freden, acting deputy assistant secretary in a September 12 email: “Keep moving, people, nothing to see here…”
“The money is now at the heart of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats into whether President Trump withheld a total of $391 million in funding as he sought damaging information on his political opponents from Ukraine’s newly-elected leader.”
“The day Richard Nixon failed to answer that subpoena is the day he was subject to impeachment because he took the power from Congress over the impeachment process away from Congress, and he became the judge and jury.”
— Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on the Senate floor arguing in favor of Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has risen in the Democratic presidential primary on her pledge to forgo traditional big-money fund-raisers, said that if she became the nominee she would continue to skip such events, a reversal of what her position has been throughout 2019,” the New York Times reports.
Said Warren: “No, I will not be forced to make changes in how I raise money. Look, for me this is pretty straightforward. Either you think democracy works and electing a president is all about going behind closed doors with bazillionaires and corporate executives and lobbyists and scooping up as much money as possible. Or you think it’s about a grass-roots, let’s build this from the ground up.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina finds President Trump’s approval rate underwater at 46% to 51%.
In general election match ups, Joe Biden leads Trump 51% to 46%, Elizabeth Warren beats him 49% to 46% and Bernie Sanders is up 50% to 47%. It’s notable that regardless of the Democrat he’s tested against, Trump always polls at 46-47%.
This piece is only available to Political Wire members.
The House impeachment effort is quickly approaching constitutional crisis territory now that the White House has declared no cooperation with the investigation. But as Political Wire readers know well, it’s also one of the more challenging political problems we’ve seen.
Here’s what favors Democrats:
Here’s what favors Republicans:
Finally, and perhaps most important, there’s the political calendar:
The good news for Democrats is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making all the decisions here while President Trump is merely reacting. But it’s not clear yet how she will choose balance the need for speed with the perception that the investigation is both fair and complete.
This is pretty great: Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents by Pete Souza.
“Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza’s unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.