Top Republican urged foreign governments to help discredit Mueller findings – live
Lindsay Graham wrote to the prime ministers of Australia, Italy and the UK to request their ‘continued cooperation’ with Barr
Australian ambassador to Washington rejects key claim by Graham
6m ago 14:15 So what’s Donald Trump up to this morning?
WELL, he’s been attacking Adam Schiff – a “lowlife” and a “lying disaster – and also having a go at 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. Lovely. ...
29m ago 13:53 Storm clouds are continuing to gather around Donald Trump over the Ukraine scandal, but that hasn’t stopped his faithful confidante, Lindsay Graham, from reportedly urging foreign governments to work with William Barr in investigating the origins of the Mueller inquiry.
Graham is said to have written to the prime ministers of Australia, Italy and the UK to request their “continued cooperation with attorney general Barr as the Department of Justice continues to investigate the origins and extent of foreign influence in the 2016 election”.
The investigation is an attempt to discredit Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
A GOP tactic as 2020 looms is to claim the entire investigation was flawed.
According to numerous reports, in the letter Graham wrote that US intelligence agencies used a “deeply flawed dossier filled with hearsay and written by a biased, former United Kingdom intelligence officer” as part of the Mueller inquiry.
Elsewhere this morning:
•Donald Trump has been tweeting since 6am. It’s the usual stuff: the US is being ripped off, Adam Schiff=bad, the Bidens are corrupt, etc etc.
•Joe Biden is ramping up his investment in key Super Tuesday states, Politico reports – trying to develop a firewall if the former-vice president doesn’t do so well in Iowa and New Hampshire.
•A number of foreign companies are reconsidering plans to invest in the US because of Trump’s trade war with China, according to Axios.
In newly disclosed text messages shared with Congress, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine at the time writes to a group of other American diplomats that "I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
The exchange, provided by former U.S Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker as part of his closed-door deposition before multiple House committees Thursday, shows what appears to be encrypted text messages he exchanged with two other American diplomats in September regarding aid money President Donald Trump ordered to be held back from Ukraine.
In the exchange, obtained by ABC News, the concerns are expressed by Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine. Gordon Sondland, the United States Ambassador to the European Union, responds to Taylor, saying, "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign."
Sondland then suggests to the group take the conversations off line, typing “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.” It’s unclear if the conversation continues, based on the material obtained by ABC News.
Sondland, a hotelier and Republican megadonor, contributed over $1 million to the president’s inaugural committee before eventually being nominated and confirmed to the top role as the United States representative to the European Union.
Taylor is a career foreign service officer who has served as the top diplomat in Kyiv since May, when Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was recalled by the administration. Yovanovitch had been smeared by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani for months as blocking Ukrainian investigations into corruption -- an allegation the State Department at the time called an "outright fabrication" that "does not correspond to reality."
But Trump referred to Yovanovitch as "bad news" in his controversial July 25 call with Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy.
The texts came just days before the White House released the military assistance to Ukraine -- almost $400 million from the State Department and Pentagon meant to boost Ukraine as a U.S. partner against Russian aggression.
Sondland has been the U.S. envoy to the European Union since July 2018. He has assisted Giuliani's effort to contact Ukrainian officials about an investigation, according to Giuliani, who says he briefed Sondland and Volker after his meetings.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Sondland told ABC News, “We are referring all inquiries on this topic to the White House.”
Volker resigned last Friday as the special envoy for Ukraine. The State Department has confirmed that Volker put Giuliani in touch with Zelenskiy's aides at their request.
Then, an unexpected turn. “You know, there’s an expression: he couldn’t carry his ‘blank’ strap. I won’t say it because they’ll say it was so terrible to say. But that guy couldn’t carry his ‘blank’ strap. You understand that.”
He needs to update his insults. They really don't use jockstraps anymore.
They have shorts with a pocket for the cup.
Only people our age would have known what the hell he was talking about.
and,
From a PM I received earlier. The poster has an excellent idea.
I emailed a personal apology to Finland's embassy for having to put up with trump.
Another question came from the Reuters journalist Jeff Mason, regarding Trump’s use of the word “treason”. The president gave another meandering answer about “Shifty” Schiff and claimed: “Believe it or not, I watch my words very carefully. There are those that think I’m a very stable genius.”
You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
This article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press.
There is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank resembles a small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table, leather swivel armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag officers observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have been made there.
Hanging prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an 1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-?two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order.
By that point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.
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