AUTONEWS

Impeachment, Trump's counterattack How it is born and why it involves Italy


Fri, 25 Oct 2019 14:11:22 +0200

It is an all-out offensive that the White House fielded to counter the impeachment against Donald Trump and to present the president's indictment as a political conspiracy to prevent his re-election in 2020.

The US administration is playing defensively, of course, for example warning its officials not to testify in Congress in the impeachment investigation: the New York Times today published the letter received from a Pentagon executive, Laura Cooper, in which the department of Defense urged her not to testify. To sabotage the investigation, some Republican deputies blocked the work of the House committees that were conducting the hearings yesterday.
Above all, however, the White House goes on the counterattack and sharpens its weapons to break the encirclement put in place by the two gates that undermine the political survival of Trump: the Russiagate and the Kievgate.

Although the FBI investigation into Moscow's interference to support Trump's victory in 2016 ended without a formal impeachment call, its outcome cast a heavy shadow over The Donald: the prosecutor's inquiry In fact, special Robert Mueller did not collect enough evidence to prove the collusion between Trump and the Russians, but he did not even rule out that the president had hindered the course of justice, highlighting a series of inappropriate contacts between tycoon advisers and the Russians.

The revelations on Trump's phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky then opened the Kiev front, and offered the base that was missing before to demand impeachment: a test of the presumed pressure exerted by Trump on foreign governments to damage the main political adversaries and obtain personal advantages.
The President's indictment procedure was initiated a month ago by Democrats in the House: Trump is accused of asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son to discredit his rival, his likely challenger in the 2020 elections An advanced request under blackmail: the Trump administration may have blocked not only military aid to Ukraine but also commercial privileges, we learn today from the US media.

The last, important, act of the White House counter-offensive in view of the verdict on impeachment, concerns the turning point in the status of the investigation into the origins of the Russiagate: the counter-inquiry led by US Justice Minister William Barr has become a criminal offense. Investigations to determine where the FBI investigation into the alleged collusion between the Trump and the Kremlin started during the 2016 presidential election were assigned by Barr to prosecutor John Durham who now has the power to issue summons, indict and summon a grand jury. A deterrent to any witness. Even Italy is now involved.

In Rome, according to the White House, the evidence of the alleged anti-Trump conspiracy would be kept. .

Not surprisingly, between September and October, three very high-ranking US officials arrived in Rome: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, William Barr and Durham himself. The New York Times has thus explained the mission of the last two: To look for evidence that could support the long-held argument by Trump: that some of America's closest allies had conspired with the enemies of the "Deep State" to prevent it from winning the presidency. A plot against him orchestrated, he said, by the administration of Barack Obama.