Trump conduct worse than Nixon’s

International Live: Donald Trump’s conduct with Ukraine was far worse than the behavior that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall, the head of the congressional impeachment probe said Thursday as he summed up the case for the US president’s removal.

Lawmakers investigating whether Trump abused his office by bullying Ukraine into assisting his reelection efforts have spent three days hearing the most explosive witness testimony since the scandal broke.

Democrats accuse Trump of demanding Ukraine’s assistance in a July 25 phone call and via a circle of accomplices, mainly senior figures in his administration. He stalled almost $400 million in military aid and a White House visit for new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, allegedly to coerce Kiev which is at war with Russia into helping.

The plot would have worked, say Democrats, if not for a whistleblower whose complaint about the July call reached Congress on September 9, ensuring the aid was handed over two days later.

On Thursday a former top White House Russia expert publicly rejected a Kremlin conspiracy theory pushed by Trump and his Republican allies that Ukraine helped the Democrats in the 2016 election. The supposed plot, which Trump also asked Zelensky to investigate, was designed to stir havoc in US politics, said Fiona Hill, a senior official on Trump’s National Security Council until July.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said Democrats were clearly “motivated by a sick hatred for President Trump and their rabid desire to overturn the 2016 election.” But Schiff delivered a powerful argument at the conclusion of the hearings Thursday that Trump believed he was “beyond accountability.”

 

Dhaka 22 November (campuslive24.com)//AZ

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