Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) is using President Trump's top insult against his own party.Collins, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee who's seen a heightened profile during Trump's impeachment process, confirmed Wednesday he'll be running to oust Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) later this year. But when his own party attacked him for "put[ting] two Senate seats, multiple House seats, and Georgia's 16 electoral votes in play," well, Collins decided to say that's all "fake news."The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which fundraises for GOP Senate candidates, issued a statement Wednesday saying it would support Loeffler in 2020's special election. In response, Collins tweeted that the NRSC is simply a "Washington-based group" whose head is beholden to bylaws that "require him to support all incumbents, even unelected ones."> Don't be ridiculous, this is FAKE NEWS coming from the head of a Washington-based group whose bylaws require him to support all incumbents, even unelected ones. https://t.co/azpS3PzaCJ> > — Doug Collins (@CollinsforGA) January 29, 2020Loeffler was appointed to fill retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson (R) late last year, putting the seat in play again later this year. Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) is also up for re-election this fall.More stories from theweek.com It's 2020 and women are exhausted Roberts reportedly blocked Rand Paul's questions mentioning alleged whistleblower's name Did John Bolton actually do Trump a favor?

Donald Trump has raged at his ex-national security adviser John Bolton, saying the Ukraine claims made in his forthcoming new memoir are “nonsense” and declaring he would have started “World War Six” if he had not been removed from office last September as the Republican effort to discredit him continues.A new poll by Quinnipiac University has meanwhile found that 75 per cent of Americans want to hear from Mr Bolton at the president’s Senate impeachment trial as GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell is forced to admit he does not currently have the votes to stop Democrats calling new witnesses to speak out.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) released a statement on Wednesday pushing back on President Trump's criticism of former White House national security adviser John Bolton."I am concerned when John Bolton’s credibility is attacked, it makes it more likely some will feel the need to call him as a witness," Graham said. "In that event, it would be important for the President and his team to call witnesses on other issues."Graham seemed to be responding to Trump's earlier criticism of Bolton on Wednesday."If I listened to [Bolton], we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book," Trump wrote on Twitter. "All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"In his statement, Graham asserted that no witnesses would be necessary in the impeachment trial."It is my opinion, based on the law and facts, that additional testimony is unnecessary in this case," Graham wrote. "For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a President from office."The Senate will vote on Friday on whether to subpoena witnesses and documents as evidence for the trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) told caucus members on Tuesday that they lack the votes to prevent the calling of witnesses.On Sunday the New York Times reported that Bolton had written in the manuscript of his upcoming book, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," that President Trump had conditioned aid to Ukraine on that country's commitment to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Bolton denied leaking the report, saying there was "no coordination" between himself, his publisher and the Times.

(Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Michael Pompeo travels to Ukraine this week to persuade the country that U.S. support remains undiminished in the wake of the impeachment saga. President Donald Trump’s continued hostility toward Kyiv -- and Pompeo’s own recent comments -- make that a harder sell.Pompeo will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other senior officials during a day of meetings on Friday following his arrival on Jan. 30. The top U.S. diplomat will “highlight U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the State Department said. He’ll also go to the U.K. -- where a key decision on using Chinese 5G technology upset the U.S. this week -- as well as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.The trip begins Wednesday in London, where Pompeo will hear directly about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision on technology built by Huawei Technologies Co. Pompeo and other American officials say the company’s equipment can be used for espionage -- a charge it denies. The U.K. announced Tuesday it believes it could work with Huawei on some technology while keeping it out of the most sensitive parts of its 5G mobile networks.“We’ll evaluate what the United Kingdom did,” Pompeo told reporters on his plane en route to London on Wednesday. “But our view is we should have Western systems with Western rules and American information should only pass across a trusted network.”But it’s the Ukraine visit, which Pompeo earlier canceled following an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, that will generate the greatest focus. The visit will be clouded by questions surrounding the U.S. commitment to Ukraine given Trump’s continued insistence that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interferred in the 2016 election.Pompeo will be the highest-ranking administration official to travel to Ukraine since Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy evolved into the impeachment debacle. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whose inquiries and lobbying prompted the U.S. to withdraw former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from Ukraine, was there in December.Another Ukraine bombshell dropped on Sunday night: in a forthcoming book, former National Security Adviser John Bolton says Trump wanted to freeze $391 million in aid to Ukraine until its government helped with investigations into his political rivals. That claim comes as senators begin debate on whether to call witnesses such as Bolton to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial.The strength of U.S. support for Ukraine, caught in a deadly border conflict with Russia, has also been undercut by Pompeo’s own words. In an expletive-filled exchange with a National Public Radio reporter last week, Pompeo asked derisively if she thought Americans really cared about Ukraine, according to the outlet.That prompted former Ukraine envoy Bill Taylor -- who was handpicked by Pompeo last year but emerged as a key witness for Democrats in the House impeachment hearings -- to write an essay in the New York Times outlining the reasons why they should.At stake in the impeachment trial is whether the president withheld support in an effort to press for a probe into the family of former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential opponent in the 2020 election.Hundreds of hours of debate and testimony in the impeachment saga haven’t clarified the true nature of current U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Senior officials in Kyiv may still have reason to question whether the Trump administration sees their nation primarily as a fledgling democracy and bulwark against Russian aggression, or just a pawn in a political effort to attack Democrats before the 2020 elections.Pompeo and other officials say Ukraine -- which has been in conflict with Russia since Russian forces invaded Crimea in 2014 -- is a national security priority and point to the delivery of almost $400 million in aid as proof.But critics says the actions of Trump and his personal lawyer outside normal diplomatic channels suggest all they cared about was obtaining political dirt.Pompeo will have to navigate the divide between official and unofficial U.S. policy without upsetting Trump or providing more fodder to the president’s critics.Here’s the Story on Trump, Ukraine and Impeachment: QuickTakePompeo has stonewalled and scoffed at questions from reporters about his role in Ukraine policy, including his eventual acceptance of the demands to oust Yovanovitch. Many State Department employees have been frustrated that Pompeo -- who often boasts that he’s put the “swagger” back in the demoralized department he inherited -- has repeatedly failed to offer explicit support for Yovanovitch, Taylor or other career officials pulled into the impeachment vortex.“I’ve defended every single person on this team,” Pompeo told NPR in the Jan. 24 interview that prompted his outburst. “I’ve done what’s right for every single person on this team.”(Updates to add Pompeo comments in fourth paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the sixth paragraph to say Giuliani has traveled to Ukraine once in recent months.)To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

The White House is reportedly trying to take the publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton's forthcoming book into its own hands.CNN's Jake Tapper reported Wednesday that sources familiar with the matter said the White House issued a "formal threat" in a letter to Bolton. Neither Bolton or his publisher Simon & Schuster have responded to a request for comment, and the White House had no comment on Tapper's report. But CBS obtained a letter the White House sent to Bolton's last week before leaks were made public warning him that the manuscript for The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir contained "significant amounts of classified information" and subsequently was prevented from being published under federal law.> NEW: @CBSNews has obtained a letter from the White House blocking Bolton from publishing his book. The date is critical here—01/23/20–before the public ever learned what the manuscript said. pic.twitter.com/auM5Cw2w3f> > — Weijia Jiang (@weijia) January 29, 2020The Trump administration, including the president himself, though, has had plenty to say about Bolton recently. The White House doesn't seem pleased about the contents of his book — which reportedly include the claim that President Trump told Bolton about his Ukraine quid pro quo — or that he's said he's willing to testify if called upon during the Senate impeachment trial. Read more at CNN.This story has been updated.More stories from theweek.com Mitch McConnell's rare blunder Did John Bolton actually do Trump a favor? It's 2020 and women are exhausted

Impeachment is serious business. Our senators need to take a breath, slow down and carefully consider all of the evidence.