Foreign
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for an end to the Democratic party-led impeachment inquiry, one day after the White House announced an uncooperative stance and House Democrats accused it of obstruction.
In a series of morning tweets, Trump said “for the good of the country,” the Democrats’ effort to remove him from office “should end now!”
Trump also said the whistleblower, who filed a complaint in August alleging that the president communicated inappropriately with the Ukrainian president “should be exposed and questioned properly.”
Facing an increasingly intense impeachment investigation led by the House Intelligence, Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs committees, Trump reiterated that his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a “no pressure conversation,” and that the whistleblower’s accounts “have been so incorrect”.
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone in a letter on Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chairmen of the three aforementioned committees, said that Trump and his administration would not cooperate with what he called the “partisan and unconstitutional inquiry”.
Pelosi responded later in the same day in a statement, saying the White House was engaged in “continued efforts to hide the truth of the President’s abuse of power from the American people.’’
Pelosi added that such actions “will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction.”
Pelosi’s assertions echoed those of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who told a press conference on Tuesday that the State Department’s decision to prohibit U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, a key witness of related events, from attending a testimony scheduled for Tuesday is “additional strong evidence of obstruction.”
Trump, for his part, continued to frame the impeachment proceedings as stemming from his political opponents’ partisan motive.
He tweeted that the whistleblower’s identity should be made public because “this is no whistleblower. The Whistleblower’s lawyer is a big Democrat.”
NAN
-Oct 9, 2019 @18:29 GMT |
Tags: Trump seeks end to impeachment inquiry as tensions intensify
