A8 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019 S LATIMES.COM
IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY
vive the stalled trade talks
that have harmed both
economies, suggesting a lev-
erage point in his push
against Biden. “I have a lot of
options on China, but if they
don’t do what we want, we
have tremendous power,” he
said.
Asked whether he had
sought President Xi Jin-
ping’s intervention, Trump
replied, “I haven’t, but it’s
certainly something we can
start thinking about.”
In a July 25 phone call,
Trump pressed Ukraine’s
president, Volodymyr Zelen-
sky, to investigate Biden and
other Democrats after Ze-
lensky asked to buy U.S.
weapons to help fight a Rus-
sian-backed insurgency, ac-
cording to a call memoran-
dum released by the White
House.
House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-San Francisco),
who announced the im-
peachment investigation
last week, wrote a letter of
complaint to House Minor-
ity Leader Kevin McCarthy
(R-Bakersfield) and ex-
pressed amazement on
Twitter that Trump would
solicit China to take down a
prominent American politi-
cian.
Once again, she wrote,
Trump “has called on a for-
eign country to interfere in
our elections — just the lat-
est example of him putting
his personal political gain
ahead of defending the in-
tegrity of our elections.”
Republican lawmakers,
who have generally de-
fended Trump against the
impeachment effort, were
largely silent about his
pulling China into the politi-
cal maelstrom.
Trump’s comments
came as the House inquiry
reached a milestone, as law-
makers began interviewing
witnesses to events and con-
versations under scrutiny
in Trump’s dealings with
Ukraine.
Kurt Volker, who re-
signed Friday as the U.S.
special representative for
Ukraine negotiations, was
the first known witness to be
deposed behind closed
doors by the House Intelli-
gence, Oversight and For-
eign Affairs committees.
Multiple lawmakers at-
tended the deposition,
which lasted several hours,
but staffers conducted most
of the questioning.
The committees last
week requested five current
and former State Depart-
ment employees, including
Volker, to appear. On Mon-
day, Secretary of State
Michael R. Pompeo said
they needed more time to
prepare, but Volker clearly
decided he was ready.
Volker’s testimony could
be key. According to a
whistleblower complaint
sent to Congress, Volker and
another senior U.S. di-
plomat visited the Ukrain-
ian capital of Kyiv a day after
Trump’s July 25 phone call,
and met with Zelensky and
other Ukrainian officials to
advise them “about how
to ‘navigate’” Trump’s de-
mands.
“Not one thing he has
said comports with any of
the Democrats’ impeach-
ment narrative. Not one
thing,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-
Ohio), the ranking Republi-
can on the Oversight Com-
mittee, told reporters a few
hours into the deposition.
Democrats, however,
said Volker urged Ukrainian
officials to stay out of U.S.
politics and warned
Trump’s emissary, Rudolph
W. Giuliani, that his sources
were unreliable.
Over the last week,
Trump has appeared en-
raged by the impeachment
inquiry. But as Thursday’s
outburst showed, he is also
unbowed, publicly reiterat-
ing his request for Ukraine to
investigate a Democratic
presidential candidate.
“So I would say that Pres-
ident Zelensky, if it were me,
I would recommend that
they start an investigation
into the Bidens because no-body has any doubt that
they weren’t crooked,”
Trump said.
Jessica Levinson, a Loyo-
la Law School professor who
specializes in campaign fi-
nance law, said Trump is
“giving House Democrats a
huge middle finger” with his
latest comments.
“He’s basically saying,
‘Catch me if you can,’” she
said. “He’s almost condi-
tioning us to think: If it’s
happening in the open, it
can’t be wrong.”
But Levinson said seek-
ing China’s help out loud
does not inoculate the presi-
dent from the law.
“If you ask a foreign coun-
try for a thing of value for
your political campaign,
that’s illegal,” she said. “Pe-
riod. Full stop. You can do it
in a whisper, you can do it
with a bullhorn, you can do it
with a tweet, you can do it in
some subterranean location
— but it’s still illegal.”
California Gov. Gavin
Newsom, a Democrat, called
Trump’s comments “a jaw-
dropping moment in Ameri-
can history,” suggesting it
was more egregious than the
Watergate scandal that
forced President Nixon from
office in 1974.
“At least Nixon had the
decency to be corrupt be-
hind closed doors, and the
decency to tape it, which
made it easier to deter-
mine,” Newsom said. “Thispresident doesn’t even care
to have any pretense on cor-
ruption.”
Trump’s comments also
prompted Ellen Weintraub,
the chairwoman of the Fed-
eral Election Commission
and a Democrat, to explain
the law in a tweet.
“This is not a novel con-
cept,” she said. “Electoral in-
tervention from foreign gov-
ernments has been consid-
ered unacceptable since the
beginnings of our nation.”
Ken Gormley, the presi-
dent of Duquesne University
in Pittsburgh and the author
of books about investiga-
tions into Presidents Nixon
and Clinton, said Trump
keeps offering new ammuni-
tion to those trying to im-
peach him.
“This has to be bad news”
for Trump’s lawyers, he said.
“This is not what you want
your client to be doing.”
In some ways, Trump’s
latest comments are not sur-
prising. At a 2016 campaign
rally, Trump publicly urged,
“Russia, if you’re listening,”
to help find Hillary Clinton’s
missing emails. Trump’s
open appeal to Moscow was
among the issues investi-
gated by special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III.
In June, Trump stirred a
bipartisan political furor by
saying in a televised inter-
view that he would gladly
take help from a foreign gov-
ernment in a U.S. election.Under fire, he later said “of
course” he would call the
FBI — but only after review-
ing the material.
“If you don’t hear what it
is, you’re not going to know
what it is,” Trump said. “I
mean, how can you report
something that you don’t
know?”
There’s no question that
Hunter Biden’s business
dealings in China and
Ukraine created the appear-
ance of a conflict of interest
when his father was vice
president, much as Trump’s
two sons, Donald Jr. and
Eric, have been criticized for
continuing to run the Trump
Organization over the last
three years.
Trump’s daughter
Ivanka led her fashion com-
pany for 18 months — and re-
ceived 16 trademarks from
China — after she entered
the White House as a presi-
dential advisor. She shut the
company last year after neg-
ative publicity led to boy-
cotts and some retailers
dropped her brand.
In December 2013, Vice
President Biden flew to
China to meet with Presi-
dent Xi, and invited Hunter
and a grandchild to join him
for the final leg on Air Force
Two.
Once in Beijing, Hunter
met with a business associ-
ate, Jonathan Li, and ar-
ranged for Li to shake hands
with his father in a hotellobby, the New Yorker re-
ported.
Trump has falsely ac-
cused Hunter Biden of leav-
ing China “with $1.5 billion in
a fund” and alleged again
Thursday that he took “bil-
lions of dollars” out of the
country.
Li ran an investment
fund that raised money in
China, but there’s no evi-
dence of any wrongdoing by
the younger Biden. His law-
yers said he did not own
what became a 10% stake in
the company until October
2017, nine months after his fa-
ther left office.
In a statement Thursday,
Biden called Trump’s presi-
dency “an ongoing abuse of
power,” and accused Trump
of “flailing and melting down
on national television.”
The president “tried to
bully a foreign country into
lying about the domestic op-
ponent he’s afraid to look in
the eye” in next year’s elec-
tion, Biden added.
After Trump told report-
ers that “I think Biden is go-
ing down,” the former vice
president tweeted back, “I
know you want to rig the pri-
mary and pick your oppo-
nent, but I’m not going any-
where.”Times staff writers Chris
Megerian in Washington
and Taryn Luna in
Sacramento contributed
to this report.Trump urges Biden inquiry by China
PRESIDENT TRUMPat Joint Base Andrews on Thursday. Republicans said little about his remark pulling China into the political storm.Brendan SmialowskiAFP/Getty Images[China, from A1]
speaks in measured tones,
at times Schiff has hurled
zingers back at the White
House, annoying a president
who is famously thin-
skinned.
Adding insult to injury,
Schiff appears regularly on
cable TV — which Trump
watches obsessively at times
— delivering sober take-
downs of the president and
comparing him to a Mafia
don.
“Adam Schiff knows how
to push Trump’s buttons,”
said Eric Bolling, who hosts
a show for the Sinclair
Broadcast Group, a conser-
vative news network, and re-
mains close with Trump and
his senior lieutenants.
Trump has largely ig-
nored House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-San Francisco),
who announced the im-
peachment inquiry last
week. She has let Schiff take
the spotlight — and the heat.
“I think he’s a bit scared
of her,” one campaign advis-
or said of Trump and Pelosi,
speaking on condition of
anonymity to describe the
president’s views. “She’s so
vicious and crafty.”
By contrast, the advisor
said, Schiff is “the smart
dork you hated in high
school.”
The growing face-off be-
tween the two — a former re-
ality television star versus a
former federal prosecutor —
is likely to punctuate the im-
peachment process that
Democrats are racing to
complete this year.
At stake for Trump, of
course, is impeachment, his
reelection and his legacy. For
Schiff, it’s all of that — and
arguably whether he some-
day becomes House speaker
or perhaps moves to the
Senate.
Schiff helped bring to
light an anonymous com-
plaint by a whistleblower
that is at the heart of the
Democrats’ impeachment
inquiry. It accused Trump of
abusing his office to solicit
foreign interference in the
2020 election by asking
Ukraine to dig up dirt on a
political opponent.
The provenance of the
complaint sparked its own
skirmish this week after the
House Intelligence Commit-
tee confirmed a report that
the whistleblower had origi-
nally approached a commit-tee staffer for guidance, and
was advised to file a formal
complaint with the inspec-
tor general for the intelli-
gence community.
Schiff had not previously
disclosed that. His office
said dozens of wannabe
whisteblowers approach the
Intelligence Committee
each year, and that Schiff fol-
lowed standard practice in
this case and was not ad-
vised of the person’s identity.
Still, Trump and his allies
swiftly accused Schiff of im-
properly conspiring with the
whistleblower or even help-
ing write the complaint. The
whistleblower’s attorneys
have said Schiff played no
role in drafting the com-
plaint.Rudolph W. Giuliani, the
Trump lawyer who led ef-
forts to persuade Ukraine to
investigate former Vice
President Joe Biden, was
particularly gleeful and sug-
gested he could sue Schiff
and other Democrats.
“It appears as if Schiff
helped orchestrate this
complaint,” Giuliani said in
an interview. “I always sus-
pected he did.”
During a House hearing
last week, Schiff infuriated
the president when he para-
phrased Trump’s July 25
phone call with Ukraine’s
president, a conversation
crucial to the impeachment
furor, calling it a “classic
Mafia-like shakedown.”
“Arrest for treason?” thepresident fired back on
Twitter. On Thursday, he of-
fered another solution.
“Schiff is a lowlife who
should resign (at least!),” he
tweeted.
While the president has
made it personal, Schiff says
that he will not. “I’m going to
do what I always try to do,
which is tune out the news
and try to focus on the job,”
he said. “The more the presi-
dent feels cornered the more
he’s going to lash out.”
Schiff was a favorite tar-
get of Trump allies during
the investigation into
whether Trump’s 2016 cam-
paign had illegally cooper-
ated with Russian efforts to
sway the election against
Hillary Clinton.
Ultimately special coun-
sel Robert S. Mueller III said
that Trump’s team wel-
comed Moscow’s help but
that he could not establish a
criminal conspiracy.
Trump has mounted the
same defense, slamming
what he calls a “witch hunt”
conducted by Democrats
bitter about losing in 2016.
Some Republicans are fol-
lowing the same script.
Rep. Devin Nunes of Tu-
lare, the top Republican on
the Intelligence Committee
and a frequent Schiff antag-
onist, tweeted that “it’s hard
to view impeachment as
anything aside from an or-
chestrated farce.”
The conservative House
Freedom Caucus has filed a
resolution to censure Schiff.
House Republican leader
Kevin McCarthy of Bakers-
field has signed on as a co-
sponsor, but the measure is
unlikely to move in the Dem-ocratic-controlled House.
While Trump has tried to
paint Schiff as an overly ag-
gressive inquisitor, the pres-
ident has spared his wrath
toward other Democrats in-
volved in the impeachment
battle, including Rep. Jer-
rold Nadler of New York, who
heads the House Judiciary
Committee that ultimately
may draft and advance arti-
cles of impeachment.
Most noticeably, Trump
still grants Pelosi some
deference, occasionally at-
tacking her but refraining
from making it viciously per-
sonal.
“My personal belief is
that he’s never had a female
peer and that he finds her
very intimidating,” said a
senior Democratic aide,
“and he knows that if he ever
wants anything done legisla-
tively in terms of an accom-
plishment to run on, he has
to have her cooperation.
“Even when he’s come up
with a name like ‘Nervous
Nancy,’ it doesn’t stick,” the
aide added.
Trump also hasn’t
viewed Pelosi as out to get
him, as he portrays other
Democrats. It’s something
Trump has said publicly,
suggesting she didn’t really
want to impeach him and
she has been “taken over by
the radical left.”
“He actually likes Nancy
Pelosi as a person,” Bolling
said. “I think he respects her
and I think he sees that she’s
really doing this because her
base is pushing her.”Times staff writer Eli
Stokols in Washington
contributed to this report.Schiff is president’s public enemy No. 1
REP. ADAM SCHIFFsays he’s undeterred by President Trump’s attacks on
him. “Schiff knows how to push Trump’s buttons,” says a Trump-allied TV host.Kirk McKoyLos Angeles Times[Schiff, from A1]