'It's like nothing we have come across before': UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump administra

[Demovictory9]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry-latest-russia-mueller-ukraine-zelensky-a9181641.html


‘It’s like nothing we have come across before’: UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump administration’s requests for help with counter-impeachment inquiry
As impeachment inquiries heat up, president’s people are busy pursuing a counter offensive aimed at discrediting Mueller’s findings that Russia interfered in 2016 election

As the impeachment hearings get more and more alarming for Donald Trump, with damning new evidence emerging every day, there appears to be increasing urgency in the parallel counteroffensives under way by the president’s team in an attempt to defend him.

There are attacks against the witnesses giving testimony by Trump and his supporters, including attempts to smear Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Ukraine expert at the National Security Council who this week provided crucial testimony about Trump’s telephone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. And there have been the extraordinary scenes of congress Republicans breaking into the proceedings and disrupting them.

At the same time, overshadowed by the publicity around the impeachment, is the ever-broadening investigation by William Barr, the attorney general, which the White House sees as a game-changer. An investigation which is seeking nothing less than to overturn the conclusion of the US intelligence services and special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia interfered in the last US presidential election.

This has now been designated a criminal investigation with power of subpoena and the possibility of prison sentences for those who have been allegedly involved in criminal actions, although exactly what these criminal actions entail remains unclear.

It may also seem odd that Trump, having repeatedly claimed that the Mueller report was a “complete and total exoneration” of him over Russiagate, is now going to such lengths to try and discredit it.