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Intelligence chair Schiff not ruling out more impeachment hearings – as it happened

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Schiff says he’s ‘not willing to wait months and months and let them play rope-a-dope with us in the courts’ – follow all the latest

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in San Francisco (now), Washington (earlier) and in New York (earlier)
Fri 22 Nov 2019 20.04 ESTFirst published on Fri 22 Nov 2019 09.01 EST
Donald Trump on impeachment: 'I want a trial' – video

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Key events

Summary

That’s all from me! Thanks for joining us for this momentous week in US politics.

Here are the biggest stories of the day:

  • Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, would not rule out the possibility of additional public impeachment hearings as his panel begins to draft its report on the inquiry.
  • Trump said in a Fox and Friends interview that he wants a trial in the impeachment inquiry, which would require the House to impeach him first. The president argued a trial would allow him to call Schiff and the whistleblower whose complaint initiated the inquiry as witnesses.
  • As Trump’s Republican allies air baseless claims that Ukraine may have meddled in the 2016 election, a report emerged that senators were recently recently on a Russian disinformation campaign to blame Kyiv for its own election interference.
  • The justice department inspector general’s widely anticipated report on the origins of the Russia investigation is expected to criticize lower-level FBI officials while debunking the president’s claims that senior leaders’ anti-Trump bias affected their handling of the probe.
  • Joe Biden said his former Senate colleague Lindsey Graham should be “embarrassed” for his role defending Trump against the impeachment inquiry.
  • Michael Bloomberg is preparing to launch his presidential campaign with a huge ad blitz.

Followers of Michael Bloomberg’s mayoralty in New York City may remember the billionaire’s attempts to speak Spanish during important announcements and natural disasters – and the parody Twitter account, @ElBloombito, that it inspired.

So eyebrows were certainly raised when El Bloombito appeared to get bumped off as Bloomberg began his presidential campaign.

Colleague: "they got El Bloombito." pic.twitter.com/MZszKU7trH

— Kate Hinds (@katehinds) November 22, 2019

But worry not! According to BuzzFeed News editor Mat Honan, it’s all just an error on Twitter’s side.

A Twitter spokesperson told me that the @elbloombito suspension was due to a mistake on its end, and that the account will be back soon

— Mat Honan (@mat) November 22, 2019

The Republican National Committee spent nearly $100,000 on copies of Donald Trump Jr’s book, the New York Times reports, citing campaign finance disclosures.

The book, Triggered, appeared at No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list when it debuted, but was marked with a dagger symbol that the Times uses to indicate that a title’s sales benefited from bulk orders.

Trump Jr has repeatedly criticized Hunter Biden for benefiting from nepotism.

Actually just said by Donald Trump Jr: "I wish my name was Hunter Biden. I could go abroad and make millions off my father's presidency. I'd be a really rich guy" pic.twitter.com/9ohFDbwJn4

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) October 31, 2019

Hi everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, picking up the blog for the final stretch of this incredibly eventful week.

Michael Bloomberg is preparing to launch an extraordinary ad blitz, according to reports. New York Times reporter Astead Wesley has a source suggesting Bloomberg’s initial $31m spend on one week of advertising could be “just the beginning”, with the billionaire prepared to spend between $500m to $1bn.

This is just the beginning. Well placed person told me the expectation in donor crowd was Bloomberg was prepared to spend $500m to $1B https://t.co/zr2L3dOvRK

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) November 22, 2019

Evening summary

That’s it from me after another very eventful week in Washington. My west coast colleague, Julia Carrie Wong, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, would not rule out the possibility of additional public impeachment hearings as his panel begins to draft its report on the inquiry.
  • Trump said in a Fox and Friends interview that he wants a trial in the impeachment inquiry, which would require the House to impeach him first. The president argued a trial would allow him to call Schiff and the whistleblower whose complaint initiated the inquiry as witnesses.
  • As Trump’s Republican allies air baseless claims that Ukraine may have meddled in the 2016 election, a report emerged that senators were recently recently on a Russian disinformation campaign to blame Kyiv for its own election interference.
  • The justice department inspector general’s widely anticipated report on the origins of the Russia investigation is expected to criticize lower-level FBI officials while debunking the president’s claims that senior leaders’ anti-Trump bias affected their handling of the probe.
  • Joe Biden said his former Senate colleague Lindsey Graham should be “embarrassed” for his role defending Trump against the impeachment inquiry.

Julia will have much more on the news of the day, so stay tuned.

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Schiff not ruling out more impeachment hearings

Buckle up because more public impeachment hearings could be on the way. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, would not rule out the possibility of additional hearings as his panel drafts its report in the impeachment inquiry.

Adam Schiff makes a closing statement during an impeachment hearing. Photograph: POOL/Reuters

“We’re not foreclosing the possibility of additional depositions or hearings, but we’re also not willing to wait months and months and let them play rope-a-dope with us in the courts,” Schiff told the LA Times.

But the California Democrat would not weigh in on when the committee might release its report or whether he believes articles of impeachment against Trump are merited.

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John Bolton has provided more details on how he allegedly wrested back control of his personal Twitter account from the White House after his September departure.

According to the former national security adviser, the White House never handed the account back to Bolton. Instead, the fomer official allegedly had to rely on Twiter’s community standards to regain access.

In full disclosure, the @WhiteHouse never returned access to my Twitter account. Thank you to @twitter for standing by their community standards and rightfully returning control of my account.

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) November 22, 2019

DOJ IG reportedly debunks some of Trump's claims against FBI leadership

The Justice Department inspector general has reportedly concluded that the FBI’s senior leadership did not act out of anti-Trump bias in its handling of the Russia investigation, although the IG criticiczed some lower-level officials’ actions at the onset of the probe.

The New York Times reports:

Investigators for the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, uncovered errors and omissions in documents related to the wiretapping of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page — including that a low-level lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, altered an email that officials used to prepare to seek court approval to renew the wiretap, the people said. ...

More broadly, Mr. Horowitz’s report, to be made public on Dec. 9, portrays the overall effort to seek the wiretap order and its renewals as sloppy and unprofessional, according to the people familiar with it. He will also sharply criticize as careless one of the F.B.I. case agents in New York handling the matter, they said.

At the same time, however, the report debunks a series of conspiracy theories and insinuations about the F.B.I. that Mr. Trump and his allies have put forward over the past two years, the people said, though they cautioned that the report is not complete. The New York Times has not reviewed the draft, which could contain other significant findings.

In particular, while Mr. Horowitz criticizes F.B.I. leadership for its handling of the highly fraught Russia investigation in some ways, he made no finding of politically biased actions by top officials Mr. Trump has vilified like the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey; Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy who temporarily ran the bureau after the president fired Mr. Comey in 2017; and Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent.

Trump will likely latch on to some of the IG’s findings to again claim the existence of a “deep state” working against his presidency. However, if history is any indication, Trump is unlikely to abandon his accusation that top FBI officials were acting out of bias against him, despite the IG’s conclusions.

In his CNN interview set to air tonight, Joe Biden also mocked the newly formed presidential campaigns of Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick.

Michael Bloomberg prepares to speak at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. Photograph: Yana Paskova/Getty Images

“Come on. I welcome the competition,” Biden told Don Lemon. “The idea that I’m not in better shape than Mayor Bloomberg, physically and otherwise?”

”Look, this -- Trump is so bad as a President, and so corrupt as a president, that everybody in America who has ever been involved in politics, especially if they have a billion dollars, thinks they could beat Trump. Maybe they could,” Biden continued. “And so what do you have to do? I’m the guy sitting on the top of the pyramid. I get it. I’m a big boy. Never complain, never explain.”

Biden also jabbed Patrick for canceling an event at Morehouse College after only two people showed up for it. “I like Deval. I really do. He’s a good guy. He’s a solid guy,” Biden said. “But I think this is about deciding who is ready for day one to unite this country and demonstrate that they could, and number two, who in fact is ready on day one to be commander-in-chief.”

Biden: I am 'embarrassed' for Lindsey Graham's role in impeachment inquiry

Joe Biden had harsh words for his former Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, who has emerged as one of the president’s most prominenet defenders against the House impeachment inquiry.

“Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life,” Biden in a CNN interview. “I say Lindsey, I just -- I’m just embarrassed by what you’re doing, for you. I mean, my Lord.”

Biden tells @donlemon he's "embarrassed by" Graham's actions after senator asks Pompeo to turn over docs related to Hunter and Ukraine

"Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life," Biden says, adding Trump is "holding power" over him pic.twitter.com/sjNjQV7Ogp

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 22, 2019

Graham, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, requested documents this week about Joe and Hunter Biden, apparently following through on Trump’s request to investigate baseless corruption allegations against the former vice president and his son.

“I am disappointed, and quite frankly I’m angered, by the fact -- he knows me; he knows my son; he knows there’s nothing to this,” Biden said of Graham. “Trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the Ukrainians wouldn’t yield to. The Ukrainians would not yield to, quote, ‘investigate Biden’ -- there’s nothing to investigate about Biden or his son.”

John Hendrickson, who wrote the incredible Atlantic article on Joe Biden’s history with stuttering, said in an MSNBC interview that he has received dozens of emails thanking him for exploring the topic.

Hendrickson, who also stutters, said it was his “nightmare” to be doing a television interview and acknowledged he admired Biden for for participating in presidential debates despite his history of stuttering. “I admire his courage,” Hendrickson said.

.@JohnGHendy thought this conversation would be his nightmare.
He explained to me why his new piece in @TheAtlantic about how Joe Biden is handling the challenge of stuttering is so personal to him.
Watch this: pic.twitter.com/lNlqpovnJI

— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) November 22, 2019

If you haven’t read Hendrickson’s piece yet, it’s well worth your time. Here is an excerpt:

Maybe you’ve heard Biden talk about his boyhood stutter. A non-stutterer might not notice when he appears to get caught on words as an adult, because he usually maneuvers out of those moments quickly and expertly. But on other occasions, like [the July debate] in Detroit, Biden’s lingering stutter is hard to miss. He stutters—­if slightly—on several sounds as we sit across from each other in his office. Before addressing the debate specifically, I mention what I’ve just heard. ‘I want to ask you, as, you know, a … stutterer to, uh, to a … stutterer. When you were … talking a couple minutes ago, it, it seemed to … my ear, my eye … did you have … trouble on s? Or on … m?’

Biden looks down. He pivots to the distant past, telling me that the letter s was hard when he was a kid. ‘But, you know, I haven’t stuttered in so long that it’s hhhhard for me to remember the specific—’ He pauses. ‘What I do remember is the feeling.’

As the vaping roundtable was wrapping up, Trump was asked whether he intended to vote for the bill meant to support Hong Kong protesters. “It’s being sent over. We’re going to take a very good look at it,” Trump told reporters.

But the president suggested during his “Fox and Friends” interview this morning that he may veto the legislation. “We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi [Jinping],” Trump said. “I stand with all of the things that we want to do, but we also are in the process of making the largest trade deal in history. And if we could do that, that would be great.”

The comment sparked at least one warning from a Republican senator who supported the legislation, Ted Cruz. Without mentioning Trump’s name, the Texas Republican predicted the legislation would become law regardless because it passed both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities.

Sen. Ted Cruz's office responds with this statement from Cruz, emphasizing the bill passed with strong veto-proof majorities: https://t.co/APywwOjaxX pic.twitter.com/uYLSZg5bVJ

— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) November 22, 2019

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