WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump, by withholding military aid from Ukraine to demand dirt on a potential 2020 election rival, went beyond anything done by disgraced predecessor Richard Nixon, the Democratic chair of the House impeachment panel alleged Thursday.
"What we've seen here is far more serious than a third-rate burglary of the Democratic headquarters," House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff said in a reference to the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation.
"What we're talking about here is the withholding of recognition (for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky) in that White House meeting, the withholding of military aid to an ally at war," Schiff said.
"This is beyond anything Nixon did."
Trump is threatened with impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives for pushing Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to investigate Democrat Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
Nixon resigned in 1974, two years after the burglary of Democratic offices in the Watergate complex in Washington.
Schiff's comments came at the end of five days of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry, which saw several witnesses testify that military aid to Ukraine was made contingent on Trump's demand that Zelensky announce an investigation of the Bidens.
"People look to us from all over the world," Schiff said. "People in Ukraine who want a better future, they look to us.
"They still look to us and increasingly they don't recognize what they see," the Democrat from California said. "That is a terrible tragedy for us but it is a greater tragedy for the rest of the world.
"In my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law," Schiff said.
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source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK, United States – Hillary Clinton launched a stinging attack on Donald Trump Friday, obliquely comparing him to former president Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 to escape impeachment, and savaging the Republican assault on fact-based politics.
The defeated Democratic presidential nominee made her remarks in a commencement address at her alma mater Wellesley College, a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, 48 years after her own graduation.
Never once uttering Trump's name, she urged the class of 2017 to get politically and socially involved, saying that the future of America depends on "brave, thoughtful people like you insisting on truth and integrity."
Coughing at one point before being passed a bottle of water and continuing briefly in a hoarse voice, the former secretary of state who made history as the first US woman to win a major party nomination for president was frequently interrupted by applause.
"Now, you may have heard that things didn't exactly go the way I planned, but you know what? I'm doing ok," she said of her electoral defeat. "I won't lie, Chardonnay helped a little too," she added to roars of delight.
Clinton implicitly compared Trump to Nixon, the Republican president brought down by the Watergate scandal. He sacked his attorney general in a move some have compared to Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey, who was investigating Russian interference in last year's election and possible collusion by Trump's campaign.
The former first lady said her class of 1969 was "furious" about the then-recent election of Nixon, "a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice."
- 'Assault on truth' -
"You are graduating at a time when there is a full-fledged assault on truth and reason. Just log on to social media for 10 seconds it will hit you right in the face," she said.
"People denying science, concocting elaborate hurtful conspiracy theories... Drumming up rampant fear about undocumented immigrants, Muslims, minorities, the poor," she added.
"Some are even denying things we see with our own eyes, like the size of crowds," she said, again alluding to but not naming Trump, who falsely accused the news media last January of misrepresenting the size of his inauguration crowds. "Then defending themselves by talking about quote unquote alternative facts."
Clinton called Trump's proposed federal budget "an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable" that "grossly underfunds" public education, mental health care, efforts to combat America's opioid epidemic and threatens to worsen climate change.
"It matters because if our leaders lie about the problems we face, we'll never solve them. It matters because it undermines confidence in government as a whole."
Much of her speech was a rallying cry for graduates to get politically involved and engaged with their communities.
"In the years to come, there will trolls galore, online and in-person, eager to tell you that you don't have anything worthwhile to say or anything meaningful to contribute, they may even call you a nasty woman," she said.
"You don't have to do everything, but don't sit on the sidelines."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
