Key witnesses to cap impeachment inquiry hearings
WASHINGTON: House impeachment investigators will hear on Thursday from two key witnesses who grew alarmed by how President Donald Trump and others in his orbit were conducting foreign policy in Ukraine, capping an intense week in the historic inquiry.
David Holmes, a political counsellor at the US embassy in Kyiv, says he was having lunch with ambassador Gordon Sondland this summer when he heard Trump on the phone asking the envoy about the investigations he wanted from the Ukraine president. The colourful exchange was like nothing he had ever seen, Holmes said in an earlier closeddoor deposition.
Fiona Hill said her National Security Council boss, John Bolton, cut short a meeting with visiting Ukrainians at the White House when Sondland started asking them about “investigations.”
The two witnesses set to appear Thursday are the last scheduled for public hearings in an inquiry that brought hours of testimony from a roster of current and former US government officials defying Trump’s orders not to appear.
DEMOCRATS SPAR AT FIFTH DEBATE
ATLANTA: Democratic presidential candidates clashed in a debate over the future of health care in America, racial inequality and their ability to build a winning coalition to take on President Donald Trump next year.
The Wednesday night face-off came after hours of testimony in the impeachment inquiry of Trump and at a critical juncture in the Democratic race to run against him in 2020.
With less than three months before the first voting contests, big questions hang over the frontrunners, time is running out for lower tier candidates to make their move and new Democrats are launching improbable lastminute bids for the nomination.
But amid the turbulence, the White House hopefuls often found themselves fighting on well-trodden terrain, particularly over whether the party should embrace a sweeping “Medicare for All” program or make more modest changes to the current health care system.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the field’s most progressive voices, staunchly defended Medicare for All, which would eliminate private insurance coverage in favour of a governmentrun system.