Call to widen Trump probe
THE chairperson of the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee said yesterday that he wanted a broader investigation into President Donald Trump.
“It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice,” said Representative Jerry Nadler, whose committee would be responsible for starting impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Nadler said his committee would request documents beginning today from more than 60 people, including the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump jr, “to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power”.
Nadler said the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller was insufficient, and that he and fellow Democrats in Congress believed the focus should be broader.
The interview follows the public testimony on Wednesday last week of Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who accused his former boss of telling multiple lies as a candidate and after taking office.
House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy responded by saying Nadler “decided to impeach the president the day the president won the election”.
McCarthy also criticised Cohen for failing in his responsibility as a lawyer to warn Trump against actions that could be illegal and said campaign violations “aren’t impeachable” crimes.
Meanwhile, Trump on Saturday took on Democrats’ newly announced platform for reducing carbon emissions, telling his most fervent supporters it smacked of socialism, which he said the US would never go for.
Trump said Democrats were “now embracing socialism”, pointing to the recently introduced Green New Deal and saying he would be happy to run against it in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats say the plan would help transform the US economy into one that is more just by promoting investments in clean energy programmes.
The deal calls for an overhaul in US energy consumption to convert to 100% renewable resources and achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years.
Trump said under the plan, the US natural gas, coal and nuclear industries would be “completely abolished” and it would “remove every gas-powered car from American roads”.
Among its supporters is Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped introduce the bill. HUNGARIAN Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, warned in an interview with Die Welt newspaper that the migration crisis that hit Europe in 2015 might come back even “bigger” and the Schengen zone countries must set up a special council of interior ministers to tackle migration issues instead of the European Commission.
“Everything that we experienced in 2015 will happen again, and it will be bigger. Soon the Arab countries will surpass the European countries in population. And I haven’t mentioned Africa yet, where soon there will be more people than can be fed.
“In that respect Hungary is a frontier country. We live our lives in complete readiness. We have many thousands of soldiers and policemen at our southern border,” Orban was quoted as saying by the outlet late on Saturday.
The head of the Hungarian government also suggested that a new body of Schengen zone interior ministers should be set up to deal with the migration issues in Europe instead of the European Commission.
“A separate body needs to be created for this, where only the interior ministers of the Schengen zone would sit.
“The interior ministers of the Schengen zone would need to turn this into a very strong council, where questions that concern the whole Schengen zone would be decided in the manner of experts and not of politicians,” the prime minister added.
The migration crisis broke out four years ago after hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers started arriving in Europe from Middle Eastern and North African countries, fleeing armed conflicts, natural disasters or looking for better economic opportunities.
According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the number of asylum-seekers in the country surged by over 130000 in 2015 compared to the previous year and did not return to the normal level until 2017.
Orban is known to be one of the most fierce anti-immigration advocates in Europe and has categorically opposed the idea of accepting refugees from other European countries under migrant resettlement schemes proposed by the EU.