Tommy Tuberville: “We don’t need the war in Ukraine to turn into Vietnam”
On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville told Alabama reporters that he supports the Ukrainians in their fight against Russian aggression. However, he believes that NATO and Europe must shoulder more of the load. “We are already over $32 billion in debt. Whatever it takes is going to run out. We don’t need this war, and we don’t need this war to turn into Vietnam,” Tuberville stated. “I have been for Ukraine ever since it started,” Tuberville told Alabama reporters on Wednesday. “[Vladimir] Putin is a murderer. He should never should have done this. There have been hundreds of thousands of people killed – on both sides.” “I am really disappointed how this thing really got started,” Tuberville said. “I was in Ukraine a few months before it started. We were told – I was told by President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy himself they are coming. They are going to come across the border. They are going to try to take more land. Even may try to take the whole country, but we couldn’t get the Biden administration to gear up and to start putting things in place on the border to help the Ukrainians. We were behind, stay behind. This administration was behind. We stay behind,” Tuberville said. “They (the Ukrainians) are holding their own, but they are playing against a major, a big major country that is right on their border,” Tuberville said. “We have to have more support from NATO.” “I voted against a lot of the funding,” Tuberville said. “None of us are sure if the proper oversight is going on. There are a lot of Republicans, where all – including me, who are getting antsy about continuing to fund what is going on over there. We need Europe and NATO to step up and do their part. We are carrying the load. The American taxpayers are carrying the load. Europe needs to be carrying the load also.” “President [Joe] Biden says ‘whatever it takes.’ Well, we are already over $32 billion in debt. Whatever it takes is going to run out,” Tuberville told the Alabama Press. “We don’t need this war, and we don’t need this war to turn into Vietnam that is going to last forever and ever. We can’t afford it. We need to get our focus on China – really our number one adversary around the world.” During a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing Tuesday covering Russia’s war in Ukraine, Sen Tuberville spoke with Lieutenant General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg and foreign policy experts from Georgetown University and RAND Corporation about the dangers of China’s potential entry into the conflict. Senator Tuberville and his SASC colleagues also discussed the threat of Russian escalation, the possible use of nuclear weapons, and the necessary course of action for the United States. “I was in Ukraine six months before this war started and talked to President Zelensky, and he knew this was coming,” Sen. Tuberville said. “They were putting troops on the border of Belarus, all over the place, building up, knowing it was coming. We didn’t do one thing. We said it was going to be a small incursion. That’s what President Biden said. We’re coming off Afghanistan, where we didn’t look very smart. What would we do different now, General, in your eyes? Now, we are doing it, though it seems like we are one step behind in everything that we are doing. What should we have done different at the beginning? Because it looked like we were going to be the defender of the free world. We need to learn from our mistakes, and we made huge mistakes at the beginning of this.” “Yes, Senator, thanks for your question. As a former and retired military officer, I’m a little bit disappointed in the military and the intelligence community that either didn’t relay this or didn’t believe it as well,” Gen. Kellogg said. “You know, recall, we had very senior officers say, one, Ukraine would fall in three days of the invasion and try to get President Zelensky a ride out of town. And that’s when he made the comment; I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition. You know, the fact is, we just didn’t really believe it, and we didn’t look at it hard. I would really question our intelligence communities, all of them, and also the military, why their decision-making was so poor in foreseeing this. Most of us saw it. We saw the indicators. I’m a big believer in indicators and patterns, and patterns and indicators were there. So, I think it was a fault somewhere in our systems that we didn’t convince ourselves that it was really going to happen. Part of it may have been a misunderstanding of President Putin himself, and they just didn’t believe he would do it. I’ve actually heard commentators saying up until the day before the invasion, he wasn’t going to do it. Yes, he was. And if you read Putin, and I had a fortune when I was in the National Security Council, I brought Dr. Fiona Hill in on the NSC team. She came out of Brookings, and she’s a very well-read person on Putin. And she says when he says something, believe it, he’s going to do it. We didn’t believe it.” “General Kellogg, do you have a clear sense of the overall U.S. strategy in Ukraine? And what does victory look like for Ukraine?” Tuberville asked. “I do not have an overall view of what the current strategy in Ukraine is,” Kellogg said. “I believe we should have one. And I think you have to put, in-state, you have to put Russia’s army at risk in Ukraine. Putin has to understand he’s got two options, lose his army or leave. If his army loses and is defeated, he falls.” “Can Ukrainians win it on their own?” Tuberville asked. “No. Let me rephrase, they can win it on their own if we give them the equipment to do it,” Kellogg answered. “Okay. What’s the most dangerous course of action for the United States when it comes to this conflict?” Tuberville asked. “What puts us in harm’s way?” “By
Nancy Pelosi says Donald Trump undermined national security
The Latest on the House impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine (all times local): 11:40 a.m. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says there is clear evidence that President Donald Trump has used his office for his personal gain. She says doing that “undermined the national security of the United States.” The California Democrat says lawmakers involved in the House impeachment inquiry haven’t decided what charges they might bring against Trump. She says they don’t know if they’ll try hearing from additional witnesses. Pelosi also says she doesn’t want to hold up the inquiry to wait for federal courts to decide whether some witnesses can testify. She says the House investigation “cannot be at the mercy of a court.” Democrats have sought testimony from people like former White House national security adviser John Bolton. But these potential witnesses have filed court cases to determine if they must appear. 11:30 a.m. A former White House national security aide says a July 10 meeting of U.S. and Ukrainian officials was so alarming that her boss told her to call a lawyer. Fiona Hill says a key moment was when European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland said he and Trump’s acting chief of staff had worked out a deal for Ukraine’s president. Under the deal, Volodymyr Zelenskiy would visit the White House in exchange for opening investigations. Hill says her boss, national security adviser John Bolton, stiffened. She says it was “unmistakable body language that got my attention.” He later told her to call a lawyer and make clear that “I am not part of whatever drug deal” that Sondland and Trump’s acting chief of staff were cooking up. Hill is testifying Thursday before lawmakers in the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Lawmakers are investigating whether Trump wrongly withheld critical security aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into his Democratic rival. 11:15 a.m. An impeachment witness is describing in detail a phone call that he overheard between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland. The July 26 call took place from an outdoor terrace of a Kyiv restaurant. David Holmes, political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, was at lunch with Sondland and overheard it. He says he heard Trump ask Sondland if Ukraine’s president was “gonna do the investigation,” and Sondland replied that he was. Holmes says he asked Sondland if it was true that Trump didn’t care about Ukraine. He says Sondland replied that he only cared about the “big stuff.” He says the “big stuff” included the Biden investigation. Sondland has said he had no recollection of having discussed the Bidens with Holmes. 11:10 a.m. A Foreign Service officer says he understood that the use of the word “Burisma” was code for “Bidens.” David Holmes is testifying before a House committee in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Other witnesses testified they did not realize that when Trump allies and others mentioned they were seeking an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, that they meant an investigation into the Bidens. The son of former Vice President Joe Biden sat on the board of Burisma. But Holmes says others working on Ukraine issues would recognize the connection between the two. The inquiry is centered on whether Trump wrongly held up military aid for Ukraine until the new president agreed to investigate the Bidens and a debunked theory that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election. 11:05 a.m. A former National Security Council adviser says the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani had been making “incendiary” remarks on television about Ukraine. Fiona Hill is testifying Thursday before a House committee in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Investigators are trying to determine whether Trump wrongly held up critical military assistance unless Ukraine’s new president publicly said he’d investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden and his son. She was asked why Ambassador John Bolton would call Giuliani a “hand grenade.” She said that Bolton was referring to Giuliani’s many TV appearances floating conspiracy theories on the 2016 election and the Bidens. She says that Giuliani was “clearly pushing forward” issues that would “probably come back to haunt us.” And she says: “That’s where we are today.” 10:40 a.m. A former White House national security aide is testifying at a House impeachment hearing that Russia’s goal in 2016 was to put whomever was elected president “under a cloud.” Fiona Hill is an expert on Russia. She says increased partisanship is “exactly what the Russian government was hoping for.” She says it is “absolutely the case” that it is to Russia’s benefit to blame Ukraine for intervention in the U.S. election. And that falls into “a long pattern of deflection” by Russia. President Donald Trump and other Republicans have pushed the theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 election while U.S. intelligence agencies have stated unequivocally that it was Russia. Hill told the committee in her opening statement that Republicans should quit pushing a “fictional” narrative about Ukraine. 10:10 a.m. A Foreign Service officer says that former White House national security adviser John Bolton mentioned critical security aid to Ukraine will be held until the new president could “favorably impress” President Donald Trump David Holmes is testifying Thursday before lawmakers in the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. Lawmakers are investigating whether Trump wrongly withheld critical security aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into his Democratic rival. Holmes says that Bolton told him that a meeting between Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Warsaw would be crucial. But Trump pulled out of the meeting. 10 a.m. An official at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine is telling impeachment investigators that he came forward with evidence about a phone call he overheard between President Donald Trump and a U.S. diplomat because he believed it was firsthand information relevant to the probe. David Holmes testified Thursday that he realized that those events bore on the question of whether Trump had knowledge that senior officials “were using the levers of our diplomatic power”
What to watch during the Donald Trump impeachment hearings
Exactly what is Gordon Sondland’s story? Certainly it’s full of international mystery, which House impeachment investigators are sorting through as they probe President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. But the intrigue is largely due to other witnesses recalling conversations with Sondland that he did not mention to impeachment investigators. Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, an Oregon hotelier and million-dollar Trump donor, Sondland has said he cannot recall many of the episodes involving him that others have recounted in colorful detail. What he does recall he sometimes remembers differently. The discrepancies with other witnesses, and Sondland’s with himself, matter as he testifies Wednesday under oath and penalty of perjury. What to watch when the hearings open at 9 a.m. EST: AT ISSUE Listen for how Sondland describes his role in Trump’s Ukraine policy and whether that policy was to hold up military aid until Ukraine made a public announcement that it was investigating Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Former White House national security aide Fiona Hill testified in private that Sondland informed her that he was in charge of Ukraine policy because the Republican president said so. Asked about that conversation during a deposition, Sondland said: “I don’t recall. I may have; I may not have. Again, I don’t recall.” Besides, he says now that he viewed his role on Ukraine as one of support rather than leadership. JULY 10 MEETINGS Testimony from multiple witnesses have described a pair of pivotal, sometimes tense, meetings at the White House on July 10 involving combinations of U.S. and Ukrainian leaders. Several of those present say Sondland explicitly connected a coveted White House visit to a public announcement by Ukraine of corruption investigations. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman remembers Sondland saying that day that the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens. Sondland tells a different version, saying he doesn’t recall mentioning Ukraine investigations or Burisma, the gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served. The only conflict he describes from that day is a disagreement on whether to promptly schedule a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Sondland was in favor. EVERYTHING’ William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, told lawmakers that Sondland said that “everything” Ukraine wanted — a White House visit for its new leader and the release of military aid — was contingent on a public announcement of investigations into the 2016 election and into Burisma. Sondland tells a more complex story. In his closed-door testimony, Sondland stated that he wouldn’t have withheld military aid for any reason. Not only that, he said he didn’t recall any conversations with the White House about withholding military assistance in return for Ukraine helping with Trump’s political campaign. Even then, though, he left himself some wiggle room, saying a text message he sent to Taylor reassuring him that there was no quid pro was simply what he had heard from Trump. Weeks later, after testimony from Taylor and National Security Council official Tim Morrison placed him at the center of key discussions, Sondland revised his account in an extraordinary way, saying “I now recall” more details. He amended his testimony to confirm that Taylor’s account was correct. Among the conversations Sondland now recalled was telling an aide to Zelenskiy in September that military aid likely would not occur until Ukraine made public announcements about corruption investigations. HOW INVOLVED WAS MULVANEY? Multiple witnesses describe a cozy relationship between Sondland and Mick Mulvaney, the White House acting chief of staff. Vindman, a National Security Council official, says Sondland cited a discussion with Mulvaney when pushing Ukrainian officials to open the investigations that Trump wanted into the 2016 presidential election and Biden. Fiona Hill, another White House national security official, says the then-national security adviser, John Bolton, told her he didn’t want to be part of “whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” Sondland suggests he knows Mulvaney only well enough to wave and say hello. TRUMP, REPUBLICANS? Of the nine witnesses testifying over three days this week, White House officials are concerned most about Sondland — because they aren’t sure what he’s going to say. If Sondland’s name-dropping is accurate, he may have had direct conversations with Trump. It’ll be hard for the president to attack his own EU ambassador, or for Republicans aware of the president’s expectation of loyalty, to do so. HOW SONDLAND IS SEEN OVERSEAS He calls himself a “disruptive diplomat.” Sondland may not be missed on the Continent as he testifies in Washington. Even before he got involved in Ukraine, Sondland’s caustic style had already created problems in Brussels, where he is the U.S. ambassador to the 28-nation EU. He visited Ukraine twice, even though it is not part of the EU and not part of his formal responsibilities. He also gave an interview with Ukrainian television boasting of his closeness to Trump and laying out his views of Ukraine, almost like instructions: “They’re Western and they’re going to stay Western.” Sondland is known for the grand gesture. At a party for diplomats and journalists last month at the ornate Cercle Gaulois club between the Belgian parliament and royal palace, he highlighted his close links with Trump and the president’s confidants. He spoke of a three-hour “family dinner” in Manhattan with two incoming EU leaders, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. There was also a special guest: comedian Jay Leno, who is said to be among Zelenskiy’s heroes. By Laurie Kellman Associated Press Follow Kellman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Nancy Pelosi invites Donald Trump to testify as new witnesses prepare
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited President Donald Trump to testify in front of investigators in the House impeachment inquiry ahead of a week that will see several key witnesses appear publicly. Pushing back against accusations from the Republican president that the process has been stacked against him, Pelosi said Trump is welcome to appear or answer questions in writing, if he chooses. “If he has information that is exculpatory, that means ex, taking away, culpable, blame, then we look forward to seeing it,” she said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Trump “could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants,” she said. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer echoed that suggestion. “If Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing, doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t tweet. He should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath,” Schumer told reporters. He said the White House’s insistence on blocking witnesses from cooperating begs the question: “What is he hiding?” The comments come as the House Intelligence Committee prepares for a second week of public hearings as part of its inquiry, including with the man who is arguably the most important witness. Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, is among the only people interviewed to date who had direct conversations with the president about the situation because the White House has blocked others from cooperating with what it dismisses as a sham investigation. And testimony suggests he was intimately involved in discussions that are at the heart of the investigation into whether Trump held up U.S. military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure the country’s president to announce an investigation into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 candidate, and Biden’s son Hunter. Multiple witnesses overheard a phone call in which Trump and Sondland reportedly discussed efforts to push for the investigations. In private testimony to impeachment investigators made public Saturday, Tim Morrison, a former National Security Council aide and longtime Republican defense hawk, said Sondland told him he was discussing Ukraine matters directly with Trump. Morrison said Sondland and Trump had spoken approximately five times between July 15 and Sept. 11 — the weeks that $391 million in U.S. assistance was withheld from Ukraine before it was released. And he recounted that Sondland told a top Ukrainian official in a meeting that the vital U.S. military assistance might be freed up if the country’s top prosecutor “would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.” Burisma is the gas company that hired Hunter Biden. Morrison’s testimony contradicted much of what Sondland told congressional investigators during his own closed-door deposition, which the ambassador later amended. Trump has said he has no recollection of the overheard call and has suggested he barely knew Sondland, a wealthy donor to his 2016 campaign. But Democrats are hoping he sheds new light on the discussions. “I’m not going to try to prejudge his testimony,” Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat-Conneticut, said on “Fox News Sunday.” But he suggested, “it was not lost on Ambassador Sondland what happened to the president’s close associate Roger Stone for lying to Congress, to Michael Cohen for lying to Congress. My guess is that Ambassador Sondland is going to do his level best to tell the truth, because otherwise he may have a very unpleasant legal future in front of him.” The committee also will be interviewing a long list of others. On Tuesday, it’ll hear from Morrison along with Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Alexander Vindman, the director for European affairs at the National Security Council, and Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. On Wednesday the committee will hear from Sondland in addition to Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, and David Hale, a State Department official. And on Thursday, Fiona Hill, a former top NSC staffer for Europe and Russia, will appear. Trump, meanwhile, continued to tweet and retweet a steady stream of commentary from supporters as he bashed “The Crazed, Do Nothing Democrats” for “turning Impeachment into a routine partisan weapon.” “That is very bad for our Country, and not what the Founders had in mind!!!!” he wrote. He also tweeted a doctored video exchange between Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, in which Schiff said he did not know the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the inquiry. The clip has been altered to show Schiff wearing a referee’s uniform and loudly blowing a whistle. In her CBS interview, Pelosi vowed to protect the whistleblower, whom Trump has said should be forced to come forward despite longstanding whistleblower protections. “I will make sure he does not intimidate the whistleblower,” Pelosi said. Trump has been under fire for his treatment of one of the witnesses, the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump criticized by tweet as she was testifying last week. That attack prompted accusations of witness intimidation from Democrats and even some criticism from Republicans, who have been largely united in their defense of Trump “I think, along with most people, I find the president’s tweet generally unfortunate,” said Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Still, he insisted that tweets were “certainly not impeachable and it’s certainly not criminal. And it’s certainly not witness intimidation,” even if Yovanovitch said she felt intimidated by the attacks. Rep. Chris Stewart, Republican-Utah, said Trump “communicates in ways that sometimes I wouldn’t,” but dismissed the significance of the attacks. “If your basis for impeachment is going to include a tweet, that shows how weak the evidence for that impeachment is,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” And the backlash didn’t stop Trump from lashing out at yet another witness, this time Pence aide Williams. He directed her in a Sunday tweet
