Skip to content

Democrats Schedule 2 Additional Closed-Door Depositions in Impeachment Inquiry

Geoff Regan Looks to Keep Role as Speaker of the House of Commons in Canada

OTTAWA—Geoff Regan, who presided over the House of Commons as Speaker for the past four years, is looking to reprise his role in the new session of Parliament. The Halifax Liberal MP plans to let his name stand among those who want to be the referee in what is likely to be a fractious Commons following last month’s bruising election campaign that returned Justin Trudeau’s Liberals with a minority government. The new session is to start on Dec. 5 and the first order of business will be for MPs to elect a new Speaker. Speaker’s office spokeswoman Heather Bradley said Regan “would welcome the opportunity to place his experience as Speaker in the [last] 42nd Parliament at the service of the House of Commons and will therefore be letting his name stand as a candidate for…

(L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) stands next to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as he speaks to reporters following a closed-door hearing with the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 4, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Democrats announced Wednesday that they have scheduled two additional closed-door depositions this week as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, even as the inquiry has begun public hearings.

According to Axios, the two slated to testify before House intelligence committees in closed-door depositions are David Holmes, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, and Mark Sandy, an official at the Office of Management and Budget.

Holmes, who serves as the counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, has been scheduled to appear on Friday at 3 p.m. Sandy, who is the director of national security programs at the OMB, is scheduled to appear on Saturday at 10 a.m.

Holmes’s and Sandy’s appearances have not been confirmed and it is unclear whether they have agreed to testify.

The announcement comes as the House of Representatives held its first public hearing Wednesday as part of the inquiry. The first two witnesses were acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier in November that closed-door impeachment hearings will keep happening for an undetermined amount of time, even after the House voted in support of an impeachment process resolution that would allow open hearings in the inquiry.

The hearings behind closed doors, which have reportedly included House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), blocking Republicans from asking witnesses certain questions, will continue as long as they are “productive,” Pelosi told Bloomberg.

House Republicans, who all voted against the impeachment resolution, have criticized the resolution as an attempt by Democrats to legitimize the impeachment inquiry under the guise of “transparency.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said that the impeachment process resolution would make Schiff “a de facto special prosecutor.”

The resolution gives Schiff the power to designate whether impeachment hearings should be open or closed, to allow staff members to question witnesses, to block questions from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), to block Nunes’s requests for certain witnesses, to release transcripts of witnesses as he sees fit, and to transfer records to the House Judiciary Committee.

Trump’s phone call on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky triggered an anonymous person to file a complaint against the president, which eventually led to Pelosi announcing an impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24.

The White House released a transcript of the phone call on Sept. 25. On the same day, Pelosi told reporters that she had not yet read the transcript of the phone call. Schiff released the complaint on Sept. 26.

It was later found that the anonymous person had contact with House Democrats before filing the complaint, The Epoch Times reported in early October.

Democrats are now working to determine whether Trump leveraged his official position for personal political gain when he requested Zelensky to investigate a server tied to CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that analyzed an alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee, and to “look into” the Ukrainian business dealings of Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump has defended his request for Ukraine’s assistance to look into Biden’s dealings, saying that it was intended to investigate alleged corruption, not to look for information on a political opponent.

Democrats have also accused Trump of having withheld military aid to Ukraine and floated its release as a “quid pro quo” for an investigation into the Bidens. Trump told reporters in early October that he had temporarily blocked the aid to Ukraine because of high levels of corruption and to spur European partners to shoulder a greater share of security assistance.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

This article is from the Internet:Democrats Schedule 2 Additional Closed-Door Depositions in Impeachment Inquiry

Trump Expected to Delay European Auto Tariff Decision, Say EU Officials

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce this week he is delaying a decision on whether to slap tariffs on cars and auto parts imported from the European Union, likely for another six months, EU officials said. “We have a solid indication from the administration that there will not be tariffs on us this week,” one EU official said on Monday. The Trump administration has a Thursday deadline to decide whether to impose threatened “Section 232” national security tariffs of as much as 25 percent on imported vehicles and parts under a Cold War-era trade law. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose agency is overseeing an investigation into the effect of auto imports on U.S. national security, said on Nov. 3 the United States may not need such tariffs…