Donald Trump balances a chocolate bar on child's head dressed as a minion at White House Halloween party
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The House impeachment inquiry investigating Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine heard on Tuesday that the White House cut key details from its transcript of the 25 July call between the president and Volodymyr Zelensky, including several references to 2020 rival Joe Biden and the Ukrainian gas company his son worked for.
The behind-closed-doors testimony of National Security Council expert Alexander Vindman was described afterwards as “extremely disturbing” by one exiting congresswoman in a hearing disrupted by a shouting match that erupted when House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff reportedly accused Republicans of trying to unmask the CIA whistleblower who first sounded the alarm.
In the prepared remarks, Mr Vindman said that if Mr Zelenskiy did as Mr Trump asked in the 25 July call and investigated Mr Biden, it would “undermine US national security.”
Mr Vindman, a veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart, was the first current White House official to testify in the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, which was largely prompted by a whistleblower report on the call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy.
On the call, Mr Trump pressed Mr Zelenskiy to investigate Mr Biden, a former vice president and a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination to run against Trump in 2020.
Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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“I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Mr Vindman said in his prepared statement.
Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, Mr Trump's nominee to be ambassador to Russia, told senators at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he did not know of any attempt by the president or others to press Ukraine to open a corruption probe into Joe Biden's son, Hunter.
He said he knew that Mr Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had spearheaded a campaign to oust Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post, but said he didn't know details, including why he was doing it.
"My knowledge in the spring and summer of this year about any involvement with Mr Giuliani was in connection with a campaign against our ambassador to Ukraine," Mr Sullivan said.
Mr Sullivan had the job of informing Ms Yovanovitch in late March that she was being recalled early from her post. He said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had told him only that Ms Yovanovitch had lost the confidence of the president. He said he was given no other explanation and told Ms Yovanovitch that he did not believe she had done anything to warrant her removal.
Mr Sullivan said he had reviewed a package of negative information about Ms Yovanovitch that was given to the department by "someone at the White House" after he and Mr Pompeo had inquired about complaints against her. But Mr Sullivan said he concluded it contained nothing that would warrant action against her.
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"It didn't provide to me a basis for taking action against our ambassador, but I wasn't aware of all that might be going on in the background and to be cautious I asked that the packet of materials ... be looked at by the inspector general and by the Justice Department," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
Jared Kushner has given an interview with Channel 13 News in Israel in which he lays into Biden.
"A lot of the work that the President's had me doing over the last three years has actually been cleaning up the messes that Vice President Biden left behind," Trump's son-in-law says.
He also insisted the president "hasn't done anything wrong" and that the American people are "sick and tired" of impeachment already, naturally not allowing an opportunity to slam the House Democrats pass.
While they focus on that, the president’s record of accomplishments is unimpeachable, and he’s going to continue to do the things that the American people care about.
In Congress, if they want to be part of the work we’re doing to try to make the country stronger and the country more prosperous, they’re welcome to join us. If they want to play silly games, we’ll obviously deal with that in an appropriate manner, but we’re not going to let that distract us as an administration.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has said he is "increasingly worried" Trump will refuse to sign a government funding bill in time for its 21 November deadline in order to trigger a new shutdown to obstruct the impeachment inquiry.
"I’m increasingly worried that President Trump may want to shut down the government again because of impeachment... He always likes to create diversions,” Schumer said during a weekly press conference on Tuesday, flanked by Democratic senators Mazie Hirono and Tim Kaine. “I hope and pray he won’t want to cause another government shutdown because it might be a diversion.”
Speaking of Gaetz, the lad found himself forced to respond after #MattGaetzIsATool trended on Twitter on Tuesday at the instigation of Ellen DeGeneres' producer Andy Lassner.
He did so with a ludicrous - and already stale - Miley Cyrus reference.
The House yesterday voted near-unanimously in favour of imposing further sanctions on Turkey in response to its attack on America's Kurdish allies in Syria in the wake of the withdrawal of US forces at the order of President Trump, a rare bipartisan rebuke to the Oval Office.
Interestingly, the only Democrat to vote against the resolution was Ilhan Omar, earning her a stinging rebuke from NBA star Enes Kanter, a Turk opposed to Recep Tayyip Erdogan who plays for the Boston Celtics.
Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland meanwhile called on the Senate to follow suit.
Barack Obama unexpectedly came out against social media's puritanical "cancellation culture" on Tuesday, telling his audience at the third annual Obama Foundation Summit in Illinois, Chicago, it does not realise meaningful social change, promotes unrealistic expectations of moral purity and should not be confused with activism.
This idea of purity, and you’re never compromised, and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.
Michelle Obama also spoke astonishingly frankly at the event about racism in America and the phenomenon of "white flight" when black families move in to traditionally white neighbourhoods.
Sabrina Barr has more on some very admirable plainspeaking.
A segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! contrasting Trump's graphic announcement of the killing of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with Barack Obama's solemn, professional address on the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 is doing the rounds online.
The family of British teenager Harry Dunn are suing the Trump administration for attempting to "cover up" the circumstances of his death in a road accident involving the wife of an American diplomat.
Christopher Anderson, former assistant to former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, testifies before the impeachment inquiry today.
He is expected to tell Chairman Schiff's team that former national security adviser John Bolton regarded the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as an obstacle to healthy diplomatic relations with Kiev. according to CNN, who got hold of a copy of his prepared remarks in advance.
Anderson will say he helped develop "key deliverables" on behalf of the administration in May to show the newly-elected President Zelensky's "commitment to reform: 1) demonstrating Zelenskyy's independence from powerful vested interests and pursuing anticorruption reform as well as antitrust reform; 2) strengthening US-Ukrainian energy cooperation; and 3) improving our bilateral security relationship which included Ukraine increasing its purchases of key US military equipment."
In a mid-June meeting, "Bolton stated that he agreed with our three lines of effort and that he also supported increased senior White House engagement," Anderson will state. "However, he cautioned that Mr Giuliani was a key voice with the President on Ukraine which could be an obstacle to increased White House engagement."
Catherine Croft, also giving a deposition today, is also expected to shine a light on Giuliani's pressure campaign.
"During my time at the NSC [National Security Countil], I received multiple calls from lobbyist Robert Livingston, who told me that ambassador [Marie] Yovanovitch should be fired," Croft plans to say.
"He characterised Ambassador Yovanovitch as an 'Obama holdover' and associated with [Hungarian financier] George Soros. It was not clear to me at the time - or now - at whose direction or at whose expense Mr Livingston was seeking the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch."
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