Impeachment: ‘I want a trial’, claims Trump

President talks up debunked conspiracy theories

AFTER five long days of public hearings, US President Donald Trump has brushed off the impeachment inquiry as “total nonsense” and proceeded to criticise a number of the US diplomats who testified to Congress about his Ukraine pressure campaign.

In one breath, Trump said House Democrats looked like “fools” during the hearings. In another, he offered a window into his political strategy ahead of an expected House vote to impeach him. If that happens, the Senate would hold a trial on whether to oust him from office.

“I think we had a tremendous week with the hoax,” Trump said at the White House. At the same time, he talked up debunked conspiracy theories that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, speaking just one day after a former White House adviser testified that the claim was a “fictional narrative” which played into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump also repeated claims that Obama administration officials spied on his campaign and underscored the need to keep Republicans unified against impeachment.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen support in the Republican Party like we do right now,” he said.

In a 57-minute phone interview on Fox and Friends, Trump said he did not expect to be impeached. But he added that if the House did vote to impeach him, he would welcome a trial in the Republican-led Senate.

“Frankly, I want a trial,” he claimed. A trial, he said, would give Republicans a chance to question Adam Schiff, who as chairman of the House intelligence committee, has led the hearings.

“I want to see Adam Schiff testify about the whistleblower, who is a fake whistleblower,” Trump said, adding that he knows the identity of the whistleblower whose formal complaint launched the impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s professed confidence came after impeachment witnesses testified under oath that the president withheld aid from Ukraine to press the country to investigate his political rivals. Trump insisted he was trying to root out corruption in the eastern European nation when he held up nearly $400m in military aid to help Ukraine battle Russian aggression.

“I think it’s very hard to impeach you when they have absolutely nothing,” Trump said.

He denied there was any quid pro quo, extortion or bribery. He also denied holding up a White House meeting or military aid to get Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations into former US vice-president Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine.

Uncowed by witnesses who warned against playing into the Russians’ hands, Trump repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) network in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime.

“They gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian,” Trump said. “I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server.”

Trump’s claim on Ukraine being behind the 2016 election interference has been discredited by intelligence agencies and his own advisers.

CrowdStrike, an internet security firm based in California, investigated the DNC hack in June 2016 and traced it to two groups of hackers connected to a Russian intelligence service — not Ukraine.

Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser on the White House National Security Council, admonished Republicans in her testimony for pushing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill said.

Trump continued to distance himself from other impeachment witnesses, including Gordon Sondland, the $1m Trump donor and subsequent US ambassador to the European Union.

Sondland said he was working on a deal to arrange a White House visit if Zelensky publicly announced investigations into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. Democrat Joe Biden’s son Hunter was a Burisma board member.

Speaking of Sondland, Trump said, “I hardly know him, OK? I’ve spoken to him a few times.”