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Hundreds of migrants from Africa are stuck in Tapachula because of Mexico’s willingness to bow to Trump and stem the flow of migrants African migrants protest outside the Siglo XXI migrants detention center, demanding Mexican authorities to speed up visas that would enable them to cross Mexico to the US. Photograph: Isaac Guzman/AFP/Getty ImagesNeh knew she was taking a risk when she got involved with English-language activists in mostly-Francophone Cameroon.She had no way of know that her decision would eventually force her to flee her country, fly halfway across the world and then set out on a 4,000-mile trek through dense jungle and across seven borders – only to leave her stranded in southern Mexico, where her hopes of finding safety in the US were blocked by the Mexican government’s efforts to placate Donald Trump’s anti-migrant rage.“It is just too much,” sobbed Neh,at a protest camp set up by migrants from across Africa outside the main immigration offices in the sweltering southern city of Tapachula. “We thought our suffering was almost over. And now we’re stuck here, treated like the lowest citizens on earth.”Not that long ago, Neh worked as a microfinance officer and lived with her husband and three children in a small town in the West of Cameroon. Earlier this year, she joined a group campaigning for anglophone independence. She insists her activism was peaceful and that she never supported rebel groups, but amid spiralling violence, she was arrested, beaten, and raped by soldiers. One night, an officer took her from her cell and told her to start running. She imagined she was about to die – but instead she ran into the arms of her husband who had paid a bribe for her freedom.Hustled into hiding, Neh was then put on a plane to Quito where she joined the growing number of migrants from around the world using Ecuador as the jumping off point for the passage north. mapThe harrowing journey requires crossing the the lawless jungles of Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, where migrants risk wild animals, raging rivers and predatory robbers .For seven days, the 37-year-old hauled herself up and down mountain slopes, hanging on tree roots. Crossing a river, she was almost swept away by the current; an insect bite paralyzed her arm. And each day, her group passed the bloated and half-eaten corpses of others who had died on the same trail.The next stage of her odyssey was more straightforward. With the help of bribes and official paperwork, Neh travelled by bus across Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. She began to dream of a new life in the US, reunited with the three children she had left behind.And then, in Mexico, everything ground to an halt. She joined hundreds of migrants from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Eritrea, Mauritania, and a smattering of other African countries who are stuck in Tapachula because of Mexico’s willingness to bow to Trump and stem the flow of migrants.Until recently, African migrants were waved through Mexico by immigration officials who had no interest in stopping them. Photograph: Isaac Guzman/AFP/Getty ImagesTrump’s main target has always Central Americans who account for most of the migrant flow through Mexico. But the crackdown has caught up travelers from all around the world.Their situation has only been exacerbated by US policies. Earlier this month the US supreme court ruled that the US authorities could deny asylum to anybody who passed through another country to get there.Meanwhile, US officials have pressured Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to accept asylum seekers from third countries, even though they are among the most dangerous countries in the world. “We have been taken hostage. We want our freedom,” said José Pelé Messa, a TV presenter who fled the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010 – first for Angola, and then Brazil, which he had left earlier this year when the security situation there made life untenable.Around him, the inhabitants of the protest camp were gearing up for another day of boredom, under the watchful eye of a group of National Guard officers in riot gear.Railings were draped with blankets and clothes sodden in the previous night’s downpour. Migrants – grouped by nationality or language – pored over documents in Spanish that they couldn’t read or scanned their phones for news from home. A pregnant woman prepared soup on a small wooden burner outside her tent. A couple of toddlers were using discarded plastic bottles as drums.Pelé gestured at the desultory scene: “I took my children through the jungle for this? I’m a corpse. I just haven’t started rotting yet.”Until recently, African migrants were waved through Mexico by immigration officials who had no interest in stopping them.But after Trump’s threat of trade tariffs in May, Mexico’s government scrambled to clamp down: flooding the south of the country with law enforcement, and stepping up cooperation with the US policy of sending asylum seekers back into northern Mexico while their cases are processed.For migrants from countries in Africa, who are much harder to repatriate, it has meant being kept in limbo. Photograph: Isaac Guzman/AFP/Getty ImagesFor Central Americans trying to get through southern Mexico the crackdown has brought more raids, record numbers of deportations, and greater vulnerability to criminal attacks as they are pushed into less visible routes.For migrants from countries in Africa, who are much harder to repatriate, it has meant being kept in limbo.Previously, Mexican immigration authorities had typically issued African migrants with documents ordering them to sort out their status or leave the country within 21 days. Now these documents, which had previously served as de facto transit visas, order them to leave by the southern border. “Mexico is using us as an instrument of politics to please Donald Trump,” said Serge, 21, who also fled the conflict in Cameroon. “This is creating a lot of anger among us.”Frustration in the camp has bubbled over several times, leading to some scuffles with the authorities. This weekend a small group of desperate Africa temporarily blocked a car carrying Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR who was visiting Tapachula. One pregnant woman threw herself in front of the car’s wheels crying and pleading for help.Migrants are particularly angered by the perception that they are being coerced into applying for asylum in Mexico – where few feel safe and almost none want to stay.“Mexico is playing games with us,” said a 36-year-old engineer from Eritrea who identified himself as Mr Testahiwet. “This is the way to get to America and we want to go to America. Mexico is the wrong place to ask for asylum.”Some are so desperate they have begun looking for ways to get through Mexico undetected – though their skin colour and their lack of Spanish makes this hard to do.One recent dawn, at a major crossing point on the Suchiate river, not far from Tapachula, around 10 Cameroonians clambered onto a raft made of huge inner tubes and headed towards the Guatemalan side. The migrants sat in a glum and nervous silence as they were punted across, and then piled into cars with blackened windows, presumably driven by people smugglers who had promised to get them through Mexico by another route.Back at the camp, Kelly, another English-speaking refugee from Cameroon, said she hadn’t been able to speak to her children for weeks. Back home, she had been a physics teacher, but she fled her job and her home when the rebels enforced a school boycott on pain of death.“You leave when you can’t take it anymore. You start running, and you keep running until you can stop,” she said. “We are not looking for greener pastures – we are looking for safety.”

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Al Franken and Matt Lauer facing new allegations



New #metoo allegations surface; Trace Gallagher has the details.

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Report: Trump 'pushed' Australian PM to help DOJ investigate Mueller probe origins



AEI scholar and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen reacts to New York Times report.

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RNC chair: This is just another attempt by Democrats to overturn results of 2016 election



RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel responds to latest impeachment push on 'The Story.'

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Saudi Arabia's crown prince said in an interview aired Sunday that war with Iran would devastate the global economy and he prefers a non-military solution to tensions with his regional rival. "Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes," the prince said. The prince said a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran would be catastrophic for the world economy.

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I am not a crook.Some 46 years ago, President Richard Nixon made that infamous declaration during a press conference in Orlando, Florida. While the quote is not exactly another "ask not what your country can do for you," his five words, perhaps more than anything else, came to define an era of American history. Today they are printed in countless history books as a study in irony, corruption, and holding our leaders accountable.Now, nearly half a century on, the murmurs of impeachment have started once again. And although no one can know the future, we very well may be listening to the words -- or reading the tweets -- that will write the chapters of our future history books. Here are seven quotes from the past week alone that students could be reciting in classrooms half a century from now.1\. "In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." -- The whistleblower complaint, declassified Sept. 26Over the past week, reports of an anonymous intelligence officer's concerns about President Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the White House's attempted cover-up of the call, went from speculative to declassified. The now-public letter begins strikingly by accusing the president of the United States of pushing a foreign leader to investigate his potential 2020 political opponent.While the identity of the whistleblower remains closely guarded, that likely won't last forever; in the words of The Washington Post, "no one expects his anonymity to last as long as Deep Throat's did." However, his name -- and place in history -- could likewise be a future AP History test question, depending on what happens next.2\. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now." -- President Trump, Sept. 26You are never really off the record -- just ask the Watergate conspirators. Speaking at a private event on Thursday, President Trump was caught on tape yearning for the good old days when spies were executed. Even as a "joke," the quote is shocking, something more along the lines of what a dictator might say rather than the leader of the free world.House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has argued, though, that Trump's quote was intended to get out: "That kind of incitement to violence is only going to chill other witnesses when they come forward," he said. The whistleblower already reportedly fears for his safety, and the possibility of retaliation from Trump loyalists.Then there is the fact that, as The Week's Joel Mathis points out, Trump is "the president of the United States ... We must take his words and ideas seriously."3\. "I will be the hero! These morons -- when this is over, I will be the hero." -- Rudy Giuliani, Sept. 26Perhaps more than anything else, irony gives a political quote its staying power. And while this one might not be as short and sweet as Nixon's famous line, there is a certain poetry to Rudy Giuliani's insistence of his innocence to The Atlantic.The former mayor of New York turned Trump's personal lawyer, Giuliani has been lashing-out at critics for a week. His statements, though, could potentially lead investigators to information that could make both him and his boss vulnerable. Giuliani, after all, is tangled in the Ukraine web, having allegedly attempted to "seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role [in the country] for himself," as The Washington Post reports. Likewise, in the transcript of Trump's call with Zelensky, the American president pushes his Ukrainian counterpart to coordinate with Giuliani on dredging up Joe Biden-related dirt ... multiple times.Giuliani's insistence, then, that he will "be the hero" in this narrative seems doubtful if there is any veracity to the White House's own transcript of Trump's call. An alternative Giuliani quote from The Atlantic interview that might also find its place in textbooks could be: "If this guy is a whistleblower, then I'm a whistleblower too. You should be happy for your country that I uncovered this."4\. "If that perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine isn't considered appropriate, then no future President can EVER again speak to another foreign leader!" -- President Trump, Sept. 27 Republicans are clearly struggling to spin the whistleblower complaint into a nothingburger, seeing as most aren't exactly prepared to call it "perfect."Even with Trump's claims that the call was completely "appropriate," the White House seemed to treat the conversation differently. The New York Times reported late last week that "current and former officials said the White House used a highly classified computer system accessible to only a select few officials to store transcripts of [certain] calls," including the July call with Zelensky. Why? Well, the whistleblower has alleged that the administration tried to bury Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president -- something that wouldn't likely have been the case if the call were considered "perfect" and "appropriate" by the administration, too.5\. "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." -- Robert Jeffress, quoted by President Trump, Sept. 29Sometimes it's not what you say, but what you quote. On Sunday, Trump tweeted a claim by Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who speculated that if Trump is impeached, "it will cause a Civil War."Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) slammed Trump for sharing the claim, tweeting, "I have visited nations ravaged by civil war ... I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant." But it also might be more than just an eye-popping pronouncement: "This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment -- a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power," tweeted Harvard Law professor John Coates.6\. "Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser." -- President Trump, Sept. 29On Sunday, Trump claimed in a Twitter thread that he should be allowed to meet "the so-called 'Whistleblower.'" According to Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger, that's "grounds for impeachment, evidence of consciousness of guilt, active obstruction of justice, and just plain old unhinged and terrifying."It's also incorrect; as Hechinger adds, "the 6th Amendment Confrontation Clause does not entitle someone to 'meet' their accuser. If this was a criminal proceeding, an order of protection would already have issued. The Constitution allows -- in a criminal trial -- the right to confront on the witness stand."Trump's insistence that he meet the whistleblower also plays into a general theme of trying to expose the identity of the intelligence official, which many critics say is an intimidation tactic. It could also be literally life-threatening; the whistleblower's attorney has said "our client will be put in harm's way" were his identity to become known in the way Trump is publicly pushing for.7\. "Arrest for Treason?" -- President Trump, Sept. 30If you stop and think about it, "Trump Raises Idea of Arresting House Chairman for Treason" is an astonishing headline.While Trump's musings about arresting Schiff became an instant Twitter meme, the reality of the quote is more worrying. Trump claims that Schiff gave a summary of the transcript that "bore NO relationship to what I said on the call [with Zelensky]," although the Times writes that the summary indeed "appears to be drawn from several portions of the call, including statements from Mr. Trump to Mr. Zelensky."Joked Aaron Rupar of Vox: "What stage of authoritarianism is 'leader publicly calls for imprisonment of his political opponents'?"I'll leave that answer up to the historians.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.

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A San Francisco tour guide has been charged with being an agent of the Chinese government, accused of picking up U.S. national security secrets from furtive locations and delivering them cloak and dagger style to Beijing, federal prosecutors said on Monday. Xuehua Peng, also known as Edward Peng, was arrested on Friday in the San Francisco suburb of Hayward, California, and was denied bail during an initial court appearance by a U.S. magistrate judge that same day, federal prosecutors said at a Monday morning news conference. "Defendant Xuehua (Edward) Peng is charged with executing dead drops, delivering payments, and personally carrying to Beijing, China, secure digital cards containing classified information related to the national security of the United States," Anderson said.

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The Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for an attack on a US base in Somalia on Monday, as the European Union confirmed a separate strike against a convoy of Italian advisers. The raid on the base prompted a counter-attack by US forces who staged "two air strikes and used small arms fire targeting al-Shabaab terrorists," Major General William Gayler, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) director of operations said, adding that 10 "terrorists" died and a vehicle was destroyed.

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As tensions over an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump continue to heat up on Capitol Hill, both Democrats and Republicans are focused on a single man: Rep. Adam Schiff.

Many Democratic lawmakers see Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as the natural choice to head up the impeachment inquiry. A group of moderate, first-term Democratic members met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday to urge her to elevate Schiff as the public face of the inquiry, according to four Congressional officials.

This group of lawmakers, who were mostly from swing districts and therefore in danger of losing their re-election bids next year, told the Speaker they see Schiff as a better choice than Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, another top Democrat. Nadler is seen as more partisan, the sources said.

But as Schiff’s star rises among Democrats, he is increasingly the target of Republicans’ ire.

On Monday morning, Trump attacked on the representative from California on Twitter. “Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement,” the President wrote. “It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”

Trump’s tweet was in reference to Schiff’s flippant comments during a Sept. 26 hearing with Joseph Maguire, who became the acting spy chief in August. During the hearing, Schiff characterized Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “classic organized crime shakedown.”

“Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates,” Schiff said in prepared remarks. He then proceeded to imitate the President’s recognizable cadence of speech: “I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good,” Schiff said, speaking as Trump. “I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of dirt, on this and on that.”

Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Elise Stefanik, argued that Schiff’s comments were inappropriate.

“It is disturbing and outrageous that Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff opens up a hearing of this importance with improvised fake dialogue,” Stefanik, a New York Republican, wrote on Twitter.

Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee reached for comment defended Schiff’s characterization of the call. One argued in a message on background that Republicans were “grasping for straws” by criticizing Schiff over the comments, saying “they have nothing else.”

“Anyone else who thinks Schiff was ‘wrong’ is merely pearl-clutching and underestimating the intelligence of the typical person who would even know who Adam Schiff is, let alone had listened to his opening statement at a committee hearing,” says T.J. Helmstetter, a former Democratic National Committee spokesman who now advises progressive organizations. “Schiff’s rhetorical device was perhaps slightly clumsy, but it was also clear to the intended audience of highly engaged people.”

Schiff also defended his own characterization of Trump’s phone call, arguing that while he did not quote the transcript of the phone call verbatim, he correctly relayed “the message” of the call.

“My summary of the President’s call was meant to be at least, part, in parody,” he said. “Of course, the President never said, ‘If you don’t understand me, I’m going to say it seven more times.’ My point is, that’s the message.”

Trump’s Monday attacks on Schiff came after a similar outburst on Friday, when the President tweeted that Schiff had “fraudulently read to Congress” a version of the July 25 phone call. Trump said that Schiff “was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words.” Schiff did not say he was reading from the transcript.

Trump’s suggestion that Schiff’s comments amounted to treason came just days after the President described the sources of the whistleblower’s complaint in similar terms. The whistleblower submitted a complaint flagging Trump’s possible abuse of power during the phone call with Zelensky. Trump said the whistleblower’s actions made them “almost a spy.”

“We used to handle” spies and treason “a little differently than we do now,” Trump told a private group, to appreciative laughter.

According to the rough transcript of the call released by the White House, Trump underscored the United States’ generosity towards Ukraine before asking Zelensky “to do us a favor.” He goes on to say he would like the Ukrainian government to investigate three issues involving the U.S., including investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s involvement in a case involving Biden’s son.

“I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,” Trump told Zelensky, according to the White House’s rough transcript. A little while later, Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” The conversation between the two leaders occurred soon after the Trump administration withheld nearly $400 million in congressionally approved aid for the country.

Trump also told Zelensky that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr should be involved.

The transactional nature of the call alarmed Democrats and prompted Schiff’s description of the call as a “shakedown.”

“You know what I’m asking, so I’m only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways,” Schiff said during the hearing, imitating the President’s speech patterns. “And by the way, don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I asked.”

—With reporting by Lissandra Villa

Via Time

A CSX freight train conduc tor failed to throw the correct switch, leading to the crash that jackknifed the Amtrak train

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Be careful about what you say on television, kids.President Trump's personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was issued a subpoena by Congress on Monday in relation to the House's impeachment inquiry of President Trump over his communications with Ukraine's government. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), sent a joint letter compelling Giuliani to produce key documents that could aid the inquiry by Oct. 15.> BREAKING: Giuliani subpoenaed pic.twitter.com/ult4WCMVHo> > -- Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) September 30, 2019Giuliani reportedly landed himself in such a position, in part, because he said on CNN that he asked Ukraine's government government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden over his activities in Ukraine. The committee chairs also wrote that Giuliani has stated he possesses evidence indicating he did not act alone in his dealings with Ukraine, and that there is a "growing public record" of information indicating he pressed Kyiv to investigate Ukrainians who provided evidence against Trump's convicted campaign chair, Paul Manafort.Giuliani was reportedly expecting to be subpoenaed and has said he would cooperate if Trump asked him to. Read more at The Washington Post.

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A California man was caught and arrested by police Saturday morning, but not before he managed to elude them for two hours while hiding inside a corn maze.

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More than half of Americans — and an overwhelming number of Democrats — say they approve of the fact that Congress has opened an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. But as the inquiry begins, there is no national consensus on how to assess the president's actions.

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Heavy rains have killed at least 113 people in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states over the past three days, officials said on Monday, as flood waters swamped a major city, inundated hospital wards and forced the evacuation of inmates from a jail. India's monsoon season that begins in June usually starts to retreat by early September, but heavy rains have continued across parts of the country this year, triggering floods. An official said that at least 93 people had died in most populous Uttar Pradesh since Friday after its eastern areas were lashed by intense monsoon showers.

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In addition to Chernobyl, Russia has tried to hide the details of other nuclear incidents, including an explosion that killed seven people in August.

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California man charged in Chinese spy operation



John Demers, leader of the DOJ China Initiative, on the Department of Justice's fight against Chinese espionage.

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In 1981, Apple's Steve Jobs said computers would free us from drudgery



Talk about stepping back in time.

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Giuliani told Politico he believes he deserves whistleblower protection, but his attempts to defend himself have only further incriminated him.

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Former British Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday supported the explanation offered as to why Vice President Joe Biden pressured the president of Ukraine in 2015 to crack down on corruption. Supporters of President Donald Trump — particularly his attorney Rudy Giuliani — have argued that Trump’s much-criticized July 25 phone call with the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was appropriate because Biden had been corrupt in pushing Poroshenko to get rid of the state prosecutor.

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Russia has warned the US against publishing private conversations between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as it emerged the White House may have restricted access to the president’s conversations with multiple world leaders. The comment was in response to the White House’s decision to publish a transcript of Mr Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Democrats announced the beginning of a formal impeachment investigation into whether the US president pressured his counterpart to interfere in the 2020 election. Asked if Moscow is worried about transcripts of Mr Trump’s calls with the Russian President being similarly released, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "we would like to hope that it wouldn’t come to that in our relations, which are already troubled by a lot of problems." "The materials related to conversations between heads of states are usually classified according to normal international practice," he added. The publication of the call, in which Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky made critical comments about German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, has drawn acerbic comments from other Russian officials. "We are waiting for the party to continue," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. "Let them publish transcripts of conversations between NATO allies. It would also be useful to publish minutes of closed meetings at the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon. Put it all on air!" Ms Zakharova also scoffed at Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to open an impeachment inquiry based on the call. "Is it the Democrats' job to make a laughing stock of the United States?" she said. "It's exactly what Ms Pelosi has done to Congress, the White House and other state institutions." A whistleblower complaint at the centre of the Ukrainian scandal claimed White House lawyers had ordered a verbatim transcript of the call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky to be stored on a separate computer system to limit the number of people who could access it. US media reports suggest similar tactics were used with Mr Trump’s calls with other leaders, including Mr Putin and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman. Current and former administration officials told CNN that at least one phone call with the crown prince in the aftermath of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was never circulated to the officials who would usually be given access to it. Access to at least one transcript of a call with Mr Putin was also tightly restricted, according to a former Trump administration official. The White House has not yet commented on the claims.

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White House senior adviser Stephen Miller defended President Trump’s attempts to have the Ukrainian president open an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, claiming on Sunday that the scandal was a “political hit job” by the “deep state” and that Trump was really the “whistleblower.”

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Fox NewsIn a bombshell report Sunday morning, Fox News reported that two frequent guests on the right-leaning cable news channel were “working off the books” to help former New York City mayor and current presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s leading Democratic opponent—and that the only person who knew about their involvement was the president himself.Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace broke the news that Giuliani wasn’t acting alone when it came to digging up Ukrainian dirt on Trump’s potential 2020 presidential opponent Joe Biden.“Two high-profile Washington lawyers, Joe diGenova, who’s been a fierce critic of the Democratic investigation, and his wife Victoria Toensing were working with Giuliani to get oppo research on Biden,” Wallace said at the top of his broadcast.“According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration,” Wallace added. “The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.”Giuliani has denied working with any other attorneys in his quest for Ukrainian-provided information on the Biden family in recent appearances on Fox News, denials that the network’s own reporting now call into question.“No,” Giuliani told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, when asked if he had worked with other attorneys. “I didn’t work with anybody to try and get dirt on Joe Biden.”Requests for comment in response to Wallace’s report from diGenova & Toensing, LLP, their eponymous D.C.-based law firm, were not immediately returned. Requests to Giuliani and the White House have also not been returned. Both diGenova and Toensing have been frequent guests on Fox’s opinion shows, specifically Hannity and Lou Dobbs Tonight. This week, during an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, diGenova blasted Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano as “a fool” for assessing that Trump had committed a crime during his July 25 call with the Ukrainian president.The remarks sparked a multi-day, on-air scuffle between Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Wallace also appeared to join in the internecine fighting over the network’s coverage of the growing scandal, implicitly criticizing the on-air commentary of some of his Fox News colleagues in recent days.Chris Wallace Clashes With Fox News Colleague Over Trump Defenders’ ‘Deeply Misleading’ Spin on UkraineBoth Toensing and diGenova have been two of the president’s fiercest defenders for years. Along with being frequent guests on Fox opinion shows and other conservative media outlets, the husband-wife team has had a close relationship with the president for a while.In March 2018, they were briefly tapped to join Trump’s special counsel legal team. Days later, however, the president decided against hiring the pair.“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel legal team,” Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said at the time. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”Revelations this week that Giuliani had been tasked by Trump to coordinate with Attorney General William Barr and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in investigating unproven allegations of corruption involving Biden, his son Hunter, and a Ukrainian energy company have pushed long-simmering Democratic support for an impeachment inquiry against the president to a rolling boil.“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call, and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it,” Trump told Zelensky on a July 25 phone call, according to a rough transcript of the conversation released by the White House this week.Trump and Giuliani have, without providing evidence, accused the former vice president and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination of supporting the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect Burisma, an energy company advised by his youngest son, Hunter. “A lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump said on the call with Zelensky, after asking the newly elected president of Ukraine for a “favor.”“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.”This story is developing.Pompeo Grapples for Ways to Outlast Hurricane RudyRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Benjamin Franklin was a leading voice in the debates framing the Constitution.

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Famous murals celebrating Iran's Islamic revolution daubed on walls of the former US embassy in Tehran have been erased to make way for new paintings to be unveiled on the fortieth anniversary of the hostage crisis. Three workers were on Sunday afternoon seen removing the original artwork with a sandblaster against the wall of Taleqani avenue, bordering the south side of what was once dubbed a US "spy nest" in central Tehran. On November 4, 1979, less than nine months after Iran's last shah was toppled, pro-revolution students took Americans hostage at the embassy to protest the ex-shah's admission to hospital in the US.

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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photo by Alex Wong/GettyThe big lie spouted by Donald Trump and his allies in the unfurling Ukraine affair—an unprecedented abuse of public trust, which has now led directly to an impeachment inquiry—is that former Vice President Joe Biden urged the Ukrainians to fire the Kyiv general prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in order to save Biden’s son's hide. Many of Trump’s cronies and foot soldiers have already spun this line, from Donald Trump Jr. to Rudy Giuliani to Arthur Schwartz.Others have rightly pointed out that, in reality, Biden was not simply relaying the message pushed by the Obama administration, but that his position was supported by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, European allies, and even groups like the International Monetary Foundation (IMF). As Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state under Obama, recalled this week, “All of us working on Ukraine wanted this prosecutor gone, because he was NOT prosecuting corruption. So did the Europeans. So did the IMF. This didn't come from Joe Biden—he just delivered our message.”That’s all, of course, true. Anyone interested in the success of Ukraine’s democratic transition, and its efforts to clean up rampant corruption, wanted Shokin gone. But here’s something that seems to have been lost in this geopolitical shuffle. Not only was Biden not trying to protect his son, Hunter, who was then working at a Ukrainian energy company named Burisma. If anything, what the former vice president did was make the prosecution of his son’s company more likely, not less—a fact that seems to have been overlooked, but which flips Trump’s lies on their head. I’m not the first to make this point. A few months ago, when Giuliani first began laundering his accusations through friendly voices like The Hill’s John Solomon—a man with an outsized history of whitewashing post-Soviet kleptocracies—The Intercept’s Robert Mackey tried to untangle Giuliani’s ludicrous line of logic. Mackey’s conclusion: “By getting Shokin removed, Biden in fact made it more rather than less likely that the oligarch who employed his son would be subject to prosecution for corruption.”And it’s not difficult to see why. Shokin was, by any measure, a clear and present obstacle in Ukraine’s efforts to steer toward a transparent, democratic polity in the aftermath of the country’s successful 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. Most charitably, Shokin’s work could have been described as ineffective; others would prefer the term “corrupt,” a hangover from the ancien régime, more accustomed to shakedowns and shirking his duties whenever it benefited him and his confidants. That reprehensible behavior could be seen, most pertinently, in the way Shokin treated an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Launched in 2014, the investigation focused specifically on the means and machinations of Burisma’s oligarchic owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Initially, the investigation appeared a sign of Ukraine’s new ways, of a willingness to target all and sundry, regardless of political connection.But it quickly became apparent that Shokin had little interest in actually uprooting any corruption percolating within Burisma, or within Zlochevsky’s network. According to former members of Shokin’s staff—including one, Vitaliy Kasko, who reiterated a few months ago that Biden never pressured anyone to avoid looking into his son’s company—Shokin ignored offers of aid from foreign partners to track Zlochevsky’s international financial network. In particular, Shokin effectively ignored the U.K.’s move to freeze tens of millions of dollars allegedly attached to Zlochevsky, identified during a money-laundering investigation directly tied to the ousted Ukrainian regime. Even after Britain’s Serious Fraud Office pronounced that the funds linked to Zlochevsky were “believed to be the proceeds of… criminal conduct,” Shokin didn’t budge. He and his office declined, time and again, to send London the documents necessary to link the frozen funds to Zlochevsky’s kleptocratic malfeasance. Instead, even when the case went to a British court, those advocating for the funds to remain frozen found that someone in Shokin’s office—it was never quite clear who—had written a letter to the British judge claiming that Zlochevsky was not suspected in any crimes. The case was as clear as any to come out of post-2014 Ukraine. And then it collapsed. An arrest warrant for Zlochevsky lapsed. The funds were eventually unfrozen, and allowed to seep back into the offshore networks linked to Zlochevsky, unseen since. All because Shokin, and his office, thought it better to allow the previous regime’s kleptocratic methods to flood back in.  The Americans—and the Europeans, and the IMF, and all those in Ukraine who had marched and stood and demanded better—were livid. Shokin clearly didn’t “want to investigate” Burisma or Zlochevsky, as Daria Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center and perhaps Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption voice, recently said. Or as then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt pronounced in 2015, “Those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should—at a minimum—be summarily terminated.” This was the world into which Biden stepped, when he became the point-man for all of those demanding Shokin’s removal. And he did so, with thunder and alacrity. As with so many things Biden has done with Ukraine, he wasn’t concerned with whose toes he stepped on. When it came to pushing for Washington to supply arms to Kyiv to fight off Russian revanchism, it didn’t matter if Biden stood at odds with the president for whom he served. And when it came to ousting a prosecutor who refused to do his job, it didn’t matter if his son’s company—a company Hunter Biden should, obviously, never have joined—got caught in the cross-fire. Biden, as the messenger for demanding a new, and more effective, prosecutor, succeeded. That success meant that Ukraine would be more likely to investigate his son’s company. And in that success, a conspiracy theory—that Biden was actually trying to protect his son, rather than push Ukraine to a more democratic path, no matter who got caught in the middle—was born. In the time since, Shokin has taken to rewriting history, claiming that he was on the warpath trying to take down Zlochevsky. (Shokin’s preferred mouthpiece for spouting this revisionism? Solomon, unsurprisingly.) But just like the president’s claims that Biden was up to something nefarious, there’s nothing to back up Shokin’s claims. As Oliver Bullough, a British journalist who covered the Zlochevsky saga, wrote earlier this year, Solomon and the rest of the pro-Trump sycophants are “putting two and two together—and coming up with 22.” That’s putting it kindly. More broadly, they’re taking a bludgeon to anything resembling fact. The lies and spin and rank illiberalism now being spun by the White House are all in an effort to undercut a looming impeachment by rewriting a history most Americans are only now discovering. In pushing to oust the former prosecutor, Biden did the right thing, no matter the personal cost. And in pushing for impeachment, in the face of Trump’s unprecedented move to pressure Kyiv to investigate Biden, House Democrats are pursuing the right tack, no matter the political cost. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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An Iowa newspaper reporter who exposed racist tweets by a charity fundraiser has found himself out of a job after his own offensive posts were uncovered.  Aaron Calvin, a journalist for the Des Moines Register, began looking into sports fan Carson King when his jovial plea for beer money turned into a national fundraiser for a children's hospital. But his profile of Mr King led to a public backlash and the newspaper was forced to hire extra security after receiving threats. Public scrutiny turned to Mr Calvin himself, who left the newspaper after it emerged he had made comments mocking same-sex marriage and used a racial slur. Mr King gained national fame on September 14, when his hand-drawn sign for donations for his "Busch Light Supply"  at an Iowa State University American football game was featured in the background of a TV broadcast.  He initially received around $600 (£488) from amused spectators but as donations topped $1 million (£814,650), Mr King said he would donate the money to a University of Iowa children's hospital. Carson King raised $1.8m for a local children's hospital The company behind Busch Light lager offered their own donation along with a year's supply of beer for Mr King in with his face printed on the limited-edition cans.  By way of thanks for the $1.8m (£1.5m) funding, Iowa's governor declared September 28 would be "Carson King Day", saying his "volunteerism and selflessness defines Iowans by nature". At around the same time, Mr Calvin began writing his profile on the 24-year-old casino security guard and found that Mr King had tweeted two racist jokes about black people while in high school.  Hey Everyone! Just a quick appreciation post for ya ☺️ ForTheKidspic.twitter.com/y0Gdj2V3Tl— Carson King (@CarsonKing2) September 26, 2019 Before the piece was published Mr King held a press conference to apologise, saying "I am so embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was 16-years-old". He emphasised that the Des Moines Register "has been nothing but kind in all of their coverage, and I appreciate the reporter pointing out the post to me". "Thankfully, high school kids grow up and hopefully become responsible and caring adults," he added.  The Register is aware of reports of inappropriate social media posts by one of our staffers, and an investigation has begun.— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) September 25, 2019 The development led Busch Light to distance itself from Mr King, thought it said it would still honour its $350,000 donation. However online supporters of Mr King turned on the newspaper, criticising its decision to cover his teenage posts. Attention turned to Mr Calvin's own Twitter profile and it emerged the reporter himself had made offensive comments about race, same-sex marriage and domestic abuse. Mr Calvin deleted the tweets and apologised "for not holding myself to the same high standards as the Register holds others."  The paper's editor, Carol Hunter, announced that Mr Calvin was no longer with the paper and that its "social media vetting" for employees would be re-examined.

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China's tightly choreographed 70th birthday bash next week risks being upstaged by pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which offer a starkly different take on the strength and power of the Communist Party being feted in Beijing. As President Xi Jinping gets ready to preside over a huge military parade and gala event on Tuesday, the former British colony is in tumult over the erosion of its special freedoms by Beijing. Hong Kong has been rocked by the worst political unrest since its handover to China in 1997, with another round of clashes between protesters and riot police on Saturday and Sunday.

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The man who slammed his SUV into a suburban Chicago mall has been formally charged with terrorism and criminal damage to property, authorities said.

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Wildlife officials found three more dead wild elephants in central Sri Lanka Saturday, raising the number believed to have been poisoned by angry villagers to seven. The animals were found at a forest reserve near Sigiriya, a fifth-century rock fortress and UNESCO-protected heritage site, police said. "Since Friday, we have found the remains of seven cow elephants, including a tusker," police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said.

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Hong Kong protesters are to join a global "anti-totalitarianism rally" on Sunday, following another night of violent clashes with police after weeks of pro-democracy unrest in the Chinese-ruled city. Police fired tear gas and water cannon on Saturday night to disperse protesters who threw petrol bombs and rocks, broke government office windows and blocked a key road near the local headquarters of China's People's Liberation Army. Thousands, young and old, gathered peacefully on Saturday at a harbourside park to mark the fifth anniversary of the "Umbrella" pro-democracy movement which gridlocked streets for 79 days in 2014.

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Back home in the Bronx is where I first heard the old saw about the Irishman who, coming upon a donnybrook at the local pub, asks a bystander: “Is this a private fight or can anybody join?”I was a much younger fellow then. The prospect becomes less alluring with age, so I have some trepidation stepping in between two old friends, Andrew Napolitano and Joe DiGenova. Through intermediary hosts, the pair -- Napolitano a former New Jersey Superior Court jurist and law professor, DiGenova a former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and prominent defense lawyer -- brawled this week on Fox News (where I, like they, contribute regularly).I’m going to steer clear of the pugnacious to-ing and fro-ing. Let’s consider the intriguing legal issue that ignited it.Judge Napolitano argues that the July 25 conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky contains the makings of a campaign-finance crime. He highlights Trump’s request for Ukraine’s help in investigating then–vice president Joe Biden. In 2016, Biden pressured Kyiv to drop a corruption investigation of Burisma, a natural gas company that paid Biden’s son, Hunter, big bucks to sit on its board.Biden, of course, is one of the favorites for the Democratic presidential nomination. Napolitano reasons that the information Trump sought from Ukraine would be a form of “opposition research” that could be seen as an in-kind donation to Trump’s reelection campaign, which should be deemed illegal because the law prohibits foreign contributions and attempts to acquire them. (Napolitano also raised the “arguable” possibility of a bribery offense, on the theory that Trump was withholding defense aid as a corrupt quid pro quo to get the Biden information. But he emphasized the foreign contribution issue. That is his stronger argument, and I am focusing on it, given that the Trump-Zelensky transcript does not support a quid pro quo demand; plus bribery, in any event, raises the same “thing of value” proof problems addressed below.)DiGenova strongly disagrees. Though there wasn’t much time to elaborate, he is clearly relying on the lack of past campaign-law prosecutions on similar facts. DiGenova is also voicing the prudent conservative hostility to campaign-finance laws: Any expansion of criminal liability would necessarily restrict political speech, the core of First Amendment liberty.I’m with DiGenova on this, but it’s a closer question than he suggests. Napolitano’s construction of the campaign laws, while not wholly implausible, is purely academic. It ignores real-world concerns about free speech and the prosecutor’s burden to prove intent.Most of the commentary on this has been very politicized (surprise!). For dyed-in-the-wool anti-Trumpers, no technicality is too trifling to be a felony. For the Trump base, it’s all a witch hunt. In light of this, the most helpful source we can turn to is the Mueller Report. (File in: Sentences I’d Have Bet My Life I’d Never Write.)Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team overflowed with partisan Democrats, and their report could have been entitled “Roadmap to Impeachment.” While they faced complications (that I’ve addressed) in making a case against the president, the prosecutors were not inhibited when it came to other subjects of the investigation. They’d have loved to nail Donald Trump Jr. But the only thing they had was the notorious Trump Tower Meeting of June 2016, when Don Jr. orchestrated a meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer (Natalya Veselnitskaya) in an effort to obtain Russian dirt to be used against Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya supplied information, but it was a dud.The campaign-finance offense that Napolitano urges be charged against President Trump appears to be the same one Mueller considered charging against Don Jr. The Mueller team’s analysis (Vol. 1, pp. 186-187) is thus on point. And it is frustratingly ambiguous -- as befits the constitutionally dubious campaign-finance laws.Two offense elements proved to be stumbling blocks for the prosecutors. The first is the question whether opposition research is a “thing of value” under federal law. Mueller’s team assumed that, in theory, it might be (the Napolitano view), but that to interpret it as such would break new ground and raise troubling First Amendment issues (the DiGenova position).The second problem was the intent element. As I’ve observed before, regulatory crimes are not innately wrong (in contrast to, say, murder or robbery). They are illegal only because we choose to make them illegal (for you Latinists out there, they are malum prohibitum). Because the conduct is not wrong in itself (malum in se), the law requires a higher degree of malevolent intent before it can be criminalized. Prosecutors must prove willfulness, which very nearly reverses the adage that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” The defendant must be shown to have known that his intentional conduct was illegal -- not merely unsavory but actually prohibited by law. The Mueller team concluded that they could not have hoped to prove willfulness beyond a reasonable doubt.So, while there might be some conceivable scenario in which acquiring information from a foreign source for use in a campaign could be a federal crime, it is highly unlikely -- so unlikely that some Type A prosecutors wisely decided that the huzzahs they’d have gotten for indicting the president’s son were outweighed by the humiliation they’d endure when the case inevitably got thrown out of court.The Mueller report is also worth considering because the campaign-finance charge the prosecutors rejected is stronger than would be any similar charge against President Trump arising out of the Zelensky call. That, no doubt, is why the Justice Department summarily declined prosecution.To hear the media-Democrat complex tell it, DOJ declined because it is beholden to the president and Attorney General Barr is acting as Trump’s lawyer, not the government’s chief prosecutor. No one who actually took five minutes to read the relevant section of the Mueller Report would see it that way. Moreover, the fact that the president is president complicates matters not only politically but legally.Trump detractors hyper-focus on the president’s request that President Zelensky provide Attorney General Barr with any information Ukraine might have about Biden twisting arms to quash an investigation involving his son’s cashing in on dad’s influence. I say “hyper-focus” because there was a lot more to it than that. Long before the conversation came around to the Biden topic, the “favor” that Trump asked for was Zelensky’s assistance in Barr’s ongoing investigation of the genesis of the Trump-Russia investigation.No matter how much Democrats seek to discredit that probe and the AG overseeing it, it is a legitimate investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice, which has prosecutors assigned and grand jury subpoena power. It is examining questionable Justice Department and FBI conduct. It is considering whether irregularities rise to the level of crimes. It will be essential to Congress’s consideration of whether laws need to be enacted or modified to insulate our election campaigns from politicized use of the government’s counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers.I mention all this because it is a commonplace for the government to seek assistance from foreign counterparts for ongoing federal investigations.Indeed, as Marc Thiessen pointed out this week in an important Washington Post column, Democratic senators pressured Ukraine to cooperate with the Mueller probe -- notwithstanding the obvious potential electoral ramifications and the specter of “foreign interference in our democracy.” These requests for assistance often occur at the head-of-state level. When I was a federal prosecutor in the mid-nineties, for example, the FBI and Justice Department asked President Clinton to intervene with Saudi authorities to assist the investigation of Iranian complicity in the Khobar Towers bombing.There is nothing wrong with our government’s requesting the assistance of foreign governments that have access to witnesses and evidence relevant to an ongoing Justice Department investigation. The president is the democratically elected, constitutionally empowered chief executive: There is nothing his subordinates may properly do that he may not do himself (it is his power that they exercise). And the president is never conflicted out of executive branch business due to his political interests. There is no legal or ethical requirement that the Justice Department be denied potentially probative evidence because obtaining it might affect the president’s political fortunes.There was no impropriety in President Trump’s asking Ukraine’s president to assist the Justice Department’s investigation of Russiagate’s origins. Okay, you say, but what does that have to do with Biden?Well, Biden was the Obama administration’s point man in dealing with Kyiv after Viktor Yanukovych fled in 2014. That course of dealing came to include Obama administration agencies leaning on Ukraine to assist the FBI in the investigation of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman. So, Biden’s interaction with Ukraine is germane: The fact that he had sufficient influence to coerce the firing of a prosecutor; the fact that, while Biden was strongly influencing international economic aid for Kyiv, a significant Ukrainian energy company thought it expedient to bring Biden’s son onto its board and compensate him lavishly -- although Hunter Biden had no experience in the industry.That aside, I do not understand why there has not been more public discussion of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in light of the instances of Hunter Biden conveniently cashing in with foreign firms while his dad was shaping American policy toward those firm’s governments. As we saw with the collusion caper, it does not take much evidence of any crime for the FBI and the Justice Department to open an investigation and scorch the earth in conducting it. And if it would have been legit for the Justice Department to open an FCPA investigation of one or both of the Bidens, then it was appropriate for President Trump to ask President Zelensky to help the Justice Department determine if an FCPA crime took place – even if doing so could have affected the 2020 fortunes of Biden and Trump.Don’t get me wrong: I am not rooting for Joe Biden or his son to be subjected to investigation and prosecution. I agree with Attorney General Barr that there has been too much politicization of law enforcement and intelligence. In the absence of a concrete, patent, and serious violation of the criminal law, I want the Justice Department and the FBI out of politics – which would be better for them and for politics. If you think there is an indecorous heavy-handedness to the way Donald Trump and Joe Biden conduct foreign policy, that’s fine – go vote against them on Election Day. We don’t need creative prosecutors deciding elections by testing the boundaries of abstruse statutes.Neither, however, do I believe in unilateral disarmament. There is at least as much basis for opening an FCPA investigation against the Bidens as for opening campaign-finance investigations against the Trumps. If I had my druthers, all of this nonsense would end. But as I detailed earlier this week, we have one candidate for the presidency -- a once-serious legal scholar and practitioner -- who publicly and straight-faced says Trump’s call with Zelensky could rate the death penalty. As we saw in the late 1990s, when Bill Clinton got to experience the independent-counsel statute up close and personal, maybe it takes Democrats being hoisted on their own petard before we finally say: This has to stop.

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If Donald Trump is her tutor on tactics, Rashida Tlaib is doing it wrong. Neither of them serve Americans well by appealing to their coarser appetites.

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Kurt Volker, the State Department's special envoy for Ukraine, resigned Friday amid a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump and his communications with the Ukrainian government, including the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Volker did not provide a public explanation for leaving his post, but a source familiar with his decision said Volker concluded he could not perform the job effectively as a result of the recent developments.One person familiar with the matter told NBC News that Volker's resignation will likely enable him to be much freer in what he can say about his time at his post if he is called at some point to testify before Congress.The whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry alleges that Volker went to Kiev to help guide Ukrainian officials on how to handle Trump's alleged demands that the government investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter. He also reportedly spoke with Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an attempt to "contain the damage" to U.S. national security.Giuliani has said Volker encouraged him to meet with Ukrainian officials regarding the Biden family. That indeed appears to be the case, but The New York Times reports Volker was acting at the request of the Ukrainians, who were reportedly concerned about how Giuliani's attempts to procure information about the Bidens and other Democrats might affect their relationship with the U.S. Read more at NBC News and The New York Times.

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A parade by China’s secretive military will offer a rare look at its rapidly developing arsenal, including possibly a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the United States in 30 minutes, as Beijing gets closer to matching Washington and other powers in weapons technology.The Dongfeng 41 is one of a series of new weapons Chinese media say might be unveiled during the parade marking the ruling Communist Party’s 70th anniversary in power.

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Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal, the county's first Sikh officer, was killed Friday during a traffic stop near Houston. Police have arrested Robert Solis.

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New Jersey police searching for 3 bronze plaques stolen from 9/11 memorial



Three bronze plaques honoring the victims of Sept. 11 have been stolen from a memorial in New Jersey, just weeks after the world marked 18 years since the terror attacks, investigators said.

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Yemen's Houthi movement said on Saturday it had carried out a major attack near the border with the southern Saudi region of Najran and captured many troops and vehicles, but there was no immediate confirmation from Saudi Arabian authorities. The Houthis' military spokesman said in a statement that three "enemy military brigades had fallen" in the attack, which he said was launched 72 hours ago and supported by the group's drone, missile and air defence units.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump took to cable news and Twitter on Friday morning as the first week of the impeachment battle came to a close in Washington.

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(Bloomberg) -- Revelations about Donald Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president are shaping up to be the most serious threat to his presidency so far, surpassing even the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference that dogged the first two years of his administration.A whistle-blower complaint released Thursday alleging that Trump abused his power when he asked Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden in a July 25 call compounded the damage from a rough transcript of the conversation the White House released a day earlier.The complaint emboldened Democrats pursuing Trump’s removal from office, while Republicans -- many of whom had criticized the House’s move toward impeaching the president -- largely refrained from comment.Trump hurt himself further after telling U.S. diplomats in a private meeting on Thursday that “we’re at war” and the whistle-blower was “almost a spy,” according to video obtained by Bloomberg News.“That is a gross mischaracterization of whistle-blowers,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told reporters.Trump evaded consequences after Robert Mueller’s investigation because the special counsel couldn’t tie the president directly to Russian interference in the 2016 election and didn’t clearly accuse him of obstructing the probe. But in the Ukraine affair, the most damaging facts are rooted in the president’s own words, recorded in a five-page memorandum that largely corroborates the whistle-blower’s complaint.Senate InvestigationWhite House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham on Thursday issued a statement calling the whistle-blower complaint “nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings — all of which shows nothing improper.”Trump, she said, “has nothing to hide.”Late Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said his panel would also conduct an investigation of Trump’s Ukraine actions. He said he is “committed to make sure that we get to the bottom of what questions need answers.”It’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to U.S. political campaigns or for American politicians to solicit their contributions. The memorandum shows Trump asking Zelenskiy for an investigation into Biden, who was at the time the front-runner to challenge the president’s re-election in 2020 -- a request that could be construed as the president seeking a non-monetary contribution to his campaign.The Department of Justice conducted a preliminary review of the whistle-blower complaint and determined a criminal investigation wasn’t warranted. But Congress could decide otherwise. For purposes of impeachment, the Constitution leaves it to lawmakers to decide whether the president’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors.”The whistle-blower also implicated Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr in the president’s efforts to seek a Ukraine investigation of Biden. “Anyone who’s involved with this episode should be facing questions of criminal campaign finance violations,” said Jed Shugerman, a law professor at Fordham University in New York.In a statement Wednesday, the department attempted to distance Barr from the events. He didn’t learn of the July 25 phone call until “several weeks” afterward, department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said.“The president has not spoken with the attorney general about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son,” Kupec said. “The president has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine -- on this or any other matter. The attorney general has not communicated with Ukraine --- on this or any other subject. Nor has the attorney general discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”Shugerman called Barr “a witness” to Trump’s actions. Giuliani may face more liability.“It’s simply illegal to solicit information or something of value from a foreign national to benefit a campaign and this looks like a months-long effort by the president and his private attorney to do just that,” New York University law professor Ryan Goodman said in an interview.Edifice of LoyaltyThe public release of the whistle-blower complaint also revealed cracks in the edifice of loyalty Trump has attempted to construct around himself, both in the West Wing and on Capitol Hill.In addition to Collins’s criticism, Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, said in a public hearing on the complaint Thursday that Trump’s call was “not okay.”While some of the president’s closest allies on Capitol Hill rushed to his defense, the vast majority of Senate Republicans were silent on the complaint. Many claimed they hadn’t had a chance to read it. Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, said that because he might be a juror in Trump’s impeachment trial, he shouldn’t comment.Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said some Republicans privately told him they’re concerned about the latest development. But he said he doesn’t expect them to break with Trump “yet.”White House officials have expressed concern that the impeachment investigation -- focused on the president’s foreign policy -- comes at a time of vulnerability for Trump. Several high-profile national security officials who could have direct knowledge of his actions toward Ukraine have recently departed.They include the former director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, who announced his resignation three days after Trump’s call with Zelenskiy, and his deputy, Sue Gordon, who was forced out of her position in August. Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton left earlier this month after a dramatic split between the two men.Unprepared for ImpeachmentThe White House appears unprepared for an in-depth impeachment inquiry. Many offices across the West Wing are already depleted, and Trump has been slow to fill jobs despite record-setting attrition. The White House has not yet retained the help of outside legal counsel to help with the potential burden.QuickTake: All About Impeachment, Including What Happens NextMeanwhile, aides have been consumed by this week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, where Trump met with a string of foreign leaders including Zelenskiy, leaving them flat-footed to respond to ground-shaking developments. Staff members began to formally plan strategy for an impeachment response upon returning to the White House on Thursday -- two days after the inquiry was announced.Still, there’s reason for the White House to remain confident. Republican control of the Senate means he is unlikely to be convicted and removed from office, even if the House votes to recommend articles of impeachment. While a handful of congressional Republicans have expressed some concern about Trump’s behavior, none have yet said it warrants impeachment.Moreover, while public opinion is swinging in favor of impeachment, many voters still believe Congress should not pursue proceedings to remove Trump from office. In an NPR News/Marist poll released Thursday, 49% of Americans said they approved of Democrats’ impeachment push while 46% did not.The president’s re-election campaign says the impeachment effort is galvanizing voters against Democrats while firing up Trump’s base.“Democrats are trying to block the inevitable re-election of President Trump because they know they can’t beat him fair and square at the ballot box,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday.\--With assistance from Jennifer Jacobs, Jordan Fabian, Steven T. Dennis, Chris Strohm and Nick Wadhams.To contact the reporters on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net;Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Andrew Harris in federal court in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua GalluFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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An impeachment inquiry is looming, and the revelations in the whistleblower scandal pop up hour by hour, but President Trump took CNN to task on Friday over the use of the word “liddle.”

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(Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has tried to insulate Republicans in case more damaging information comes out about President Donald Trump and swings public opinion, even as he lashes out at Democrats for pursuing an impeachment inquiry.The Kentucky Republican has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of caving to the Democratic “far left” in pursuing “a never-ending impeachment parade in search of a rationale.”Still, he has yet to offer a vigorous public defense of Trump and his interactions with the Ukrainian president, which are at the center of the latest controversy. And he allowed passage of a resolution pushed by Democratic leader Chuck Schumer that urged the White House to let lawmakers see a whistle-blower’s complaint about the president’s actions.Several Republican senators are following McConnell’s lead, offering circumspect reactions to the release of a White House memo of Trump’s call and the whistle-blower complaint that flagged it as potentially criminal. On Thursday, an increasingly common response from GOP senators was that they’re withholding judgment because they could be called upon to act as jurors if Trump is impeached in the House.“The question that my House colleagues are having to contemplate right now is whether or not it rises to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor” necessary for impeachment, Senator Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana, said Thursday. “I’m a potential juror in this whole situation if they determine that it is. Jurors aren’t supposed to talk.”While some Republicans have expressed disapproval of Trump’s conduct in the past, Pelosi’s impeachment threat has elevated the stakes for lawmakers expressing their opinion.Since his initial comments Tuesday, McConnell used his speeches on the Senate floor to defend Trump’s border wall and to implore Democrats to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal. He hasn’t commented on the whistle-blower’s report released Thursday, but he said in a statement to Politico Wednesday that from what he saw in the rough transcript of the call, it was “laughable to think this is anywhere close to an impeachable offense.”McConnell also took the rare step on Tuesday of agreeing to join Schumer’s resolution calling for the Trump administration to immediately hand the whistle-blower complaint over to the House and Senate intelligence committees.Perhaps even more significant, the resolution was adopted via unanimous consent -- a warning to the White House from the lawmakers who would determine the president’s fate if he is impeached in the House. Two-thirds of the Senate would have to convict Trump to remove him from office, and no Republican has yet said Trump’s conduct was worthy of impeachment.Allowing Schumer’s resolution to pass without a fight protected McConnell’s Republicans from potential accusations that they were aiding a cover-up. That still allowed them to criticize Pelosi, as McConnell did, for a “rush to judgment” by declaring an impeachment inquiry before she had all the facts.Lawmakers who would have the task of evaluating the president will have to decide whether Trump committed an impeachable offense. The House’s inquiry will look into Trump’s decision to withhold aid for Ukraine while pressing that country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, now a leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.McConnell has said that Congress needs to get the facts and that senators want to protect whistle-blowers who go through the proper channels to lodge their concerns. He has not backed up the president’s call to investigate the Bidens.Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, said it’s appropriate to dig further into what transpired and have a “normal process” through the intelligence committee.“I think we should look at this and understand exactly what happened here,” he said.Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said his panel is beginning it’s own review and “is committed to getting to the bottom” of questions about the Ukraine issue. “There’s a lot we have to learn,” he said.‘Nothing Burger’Some Republican senators, however, have hewed more closely to Trump’s talking points, raising questions about Biden’s conduct as vice president and declaring that the rough transcript of the phone call shows no explicit threat from the president in order to exact a favor from Ukraine.One notable loyal ally for Trump is South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He has routinely dismissed any suggestion that the president’s conduct was out of line.“This phone call is a nothing burger in terms of a quid pro quo,” Graham said. “The president of the United States did not remotely suggest to the Ukraine, ‘If you don’t do my political bidding against the Bidens I’m going to cut your money off.’”Foreign Aid HoldupMcConnell has made no secret of his disagreement with the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to hold up aid for Ukraine.He said this week he had worked for months behind the scenes to have the Trump administration deliver the congressionally appropriated funds, pressing both the secretary of Defense and the secretary of State on the matter personally and also having his staff engage the administration.He told reporters on Tuesday, a day before release of the call memo, he had not been given any explanation for why the aid had been delayed -- further insulating himself from Trump.Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said some Republicans have privately told him they are concerned about the new developments, but he doesn’t expect them to break with Trump “yet.” He said many Republicans seem glad that Congress is about to take a two-week break, which will let them “avoid questions” from reporters in the Capitol.Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy said it will be interesting to see what his Republican colleagues say after they’ve had a chance to speak with their constituents.“What matters here is not first reactions of congressional Republicans but first reactions of voters,” Murphy said. “I think voters are going to see this as a stinking fish.”\--With assistance from Evan Sully.To contact the reporters on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net;Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Daniel Flatley in Washington at dflatley1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Joe Sobczyk, Anna EdgertonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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