(Bloomberg) — Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is moving forward as several House committees are due to get private briefings Wednesday from the State Department inspector general on documents related to Ukraine.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has been subpoenaed to provide documents by Friday to three House committees.
Here are the latest developments:
Putin Defends Trump on Ukraine Call Claims (9:36 a.m.)
Under political siege in Washington and facing an impeachment threat, Trump got support from one key figure — Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Putin rode to Trump’s defense Wednesday over allegations the U.S. president pressured his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, now a leading candidate to challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential elections.
“From what we know, I don’t see anything compromising at all,” Putin told an audience at the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow. “I didn’t see that during this phone call Trump demanded compromising material from Zelenskiy at any cost and threatened him that he wouldn’t help Ukraine.”
While the Kremlin has said it wouldn’t like transcripts of Trump’s calls with Putin to be released, the Russian leader appeared more relaxed about the prospect. Pointing to his past experience as a KGB spy, Putin said “any conversation can be published — I always proceed from that.”
Putin added that after political controversy erupted in the U.S. over his Helsinki summit meeting with Trump last year, he told officials in Washington to publish details of their talks.
“We don’t mind,” Putin said. “I assure you that there’s nothing there that would compromise President Trump.”
Key Events
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff will hold a press conference in the Capitol at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday. Trump holds his own press availability at 2 p.m. at the White House along with the president of the Republic of Finland.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he never met or talked by phone with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whose contacts in Ukraine are part of the impeachment inquiry. Zelenskiy said the Ukrainian transcript of his July 25 call with Trump is similar to the one released by the White House.Kurt Volker, who resigned last week as U.S. special representative to Ukraine, confirmed he’ll testify in private Thursday in front of three House committees, according to an official from one panel.The chairmen of the three committees warned Pompeo to “immediately cease intimidating” State Department witnesses, hours after the secretary of state rejected the panels’ plan to take testimony from several State officials.A Monmouth University poll showed that 63% of Americans say it’s wrong for a U.S. president to request help from a foreign leader to investigate a political rival and about the same proportion believe Trump probably did just that.
–With assistance from Billy House.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Halpin in moscow at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at [email protected], Elizabeth Wasserman, Laurie Asséo
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