House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called President Trump's complaint about the lengthy sentence of his longtime confidante Roger Stone an "abuse of power," echoing one of the impeachment charges the House brought against the president."This is an abuse of power that the president is again trying to manipulate federal law enforcement to serve his political interests," Pelosi said at her weekly press briefing."The president is what he is," the speaker continued, "but where are the Republicans to speak out on this blatant violation of the rule of law?"On Tuesday, Trump complained on Twitter about the seven-to-nine-year sentence prosecutors recommended for Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, saying the sentence constituted a “horrible and very unfair situation.”Shortly thereafter, the Justice Department submitted a revised filing stating that the prosecutors’ recommended lengthy sentence “could be considered excessive and unwarranted,” prompting Pelosi to call Trump's comments "political interference" and an "assault on the rule of law."The four prosecutors who recommended Stone’s original sentence subsequently either resigned or quit the case after the DOJ criticized their decision.Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren called on Wednesday for Barr to “resign or face impeachment” after the Justice Department weighed in on the Stone sentencing.Pelosi, however, batted down the suggestion that Barr should be impeached, saying Congress is not "going to spend all of our time going after every lie that the administration henchmen make," even though Barr has "deeply damaged the rule of law.""The president gave us no choice in his actions in violating the separation of power that is contained in the Constitution," Pelosi said, explaining why Congress moved forward with impeaching Trump."There's so much malfeasance on the part of the people in the executive branch right now, but the fact is our responsibility is to honor our oath of office to protect and defend," the speaker continued. "But we can point out the disrespect that the attorney general has for the rule of law, for lying to Congress."

President Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out against former White House chief of staff John Kelly for being disloyal after the ex-adviser came to the defense of a former national security aide who offered key testimony in the impeachment inquiry. The president's comments targeting Kelly came after Kelly defended Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was among administration officials who raised concerns about Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president. That call spurred the president's impeachment trial, which ended in acquittal last week.

Donald Trump's respected former chief of staff let rip against the "illegal" scheme in Ukraine that led to impeachment, The Atlantic reported Thursday, drawing an angry response from the US president. In an unusually blunt speech late Wednesday, retired Marine Corps general John Kelly also criticized Trump's policies on North Korea, immigration and intervention in the case of a special forces soldier accused of war crimes. Kelly, who served in the White House from 2017-2019, sprang to the defense of national security advisor Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump in his impeachment probe, only to be fired last Friday in apparent retaliation.

A top lawyer on the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that a decision about whether to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton will probably be made "over the next couple of weeks."

Daniel Goldman, the veteran prosecutor who questioned witnesses in the committee's public impeachment hearings in November, said “I suspect that there will be some resolution to that over the next couple of weeks.” He spoke during a Thursday morning interview with former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, who now hosts the podcast "Stay Tuned with Preet."

Bolton is a central witness to allegations that President Donald Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals. That allegation formed the basis of the House's decision to impeach Trump in December, which resulted in last week's acquittal by the Senate. But a forthcoming book by Bolton is expected to describe interactions with Trump in which Bolton claims the president told him he was withholding military aid from Ukraine until the country assisted with the politically motivated probes.

House leaders have given little indication they intend to continue pursuing the Ukraine matter now that the Senate has voted to acquit Trump, almost entirely along party lines. Goldman emphasized that he wasn't sure what the outcome of the Bolton discussions would be, but his comments suggest the question is still under active consideration and could be resolved in short order.

Democrats, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), have been skeptical about seeking Bolton's testimony because he has already refused multiple opportunities to tell his story to investigators and had previously indicated he would fight a House subpoena in court. Bolton did say he would testify during the Senate’s impeachment trial if subpoenaed, but Senate Republicans ultimately decided against calling witnesses.

Goldman's interview also undercut suggestions by Trump's critics that the record of his July 25 call with Ukraine's president — a central piece of evidence in the House's case — was incomplete or omitted damaging information.

"I think that's been overblown a little bit," Goldman said, noting that witnesses described the call summary as nearly entirely accurate. One omission was of the word "Burisma," the Ukrainian energy company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son sat on the board, which the House contended was code for Trump's demand to investigate his presidential rival. The second, Goldman noted, was a minor reference to a video.

Some Democrats suggested much more had been left out, noting that the 30-minute duration of the call didn't appear to match up with the length of the transcript. But Goldman suggested that too was unconcerning.

"Remember that you've got translations going back and forth. So, Zelensky spoke primarily in Ukrainian, so there was a fair amount of translation," Goldman said.

"It doubles the time?" Bharara replied

"It doubles the time, exactly," Goldman said.

Goldman spent much of the interview describing his personal recollection of the Ukraine investigation — from his vantage point when Republicans stormed the House's secure hearing room causing an hours-long delay in one of the witness depositions, to the superstitious haircut he got before the impeachment trial.

Goldman also offered a window into some of the strategy House prosecutors deployed in the Senate impeachment trial. He said the House managers opted to use 21 hours of time to lay out their case in part because many senators were "popping in, popping out" of the chamber so would likely need refreshers.

"We obviously didn't need that much time if we were speaking to a captive jury that was sitting there, forced to sit there and listened to everything," he said.

"The other part is that we wanted to tell the story in multiple different ways," Goldman said, adding, " Chairman Schiff had an introduction of about two hours' long, which was a short summary of the case, relatively short. We did a factual narrative or a chronological argument, I should say, explaining how the story unfolded and at every step of the way ... Then, we attacked the analysis, the argument where why was this an abuse of power and what were the aspects of it that were an abuse of power? Most importantly, we took on a lot of the defenses in the context of making the argument."

Goldman also said he expected Chief Justice John Roberts to play more of a role in the trial than he did. He said House prosecutors raised early concerns during the trial that Trump's team might introduce evidence into the trial that the House had subpoenaed for but never received.

"There was no real mechanism as there is in court to limit it so we wanted to get out in front of it and we teed it up through the parliamentarian just to say this might come up, just so he's prepared," Goldman said. "I think he was prepared to respond if that came about. For the most part, I think that there's very little role for the Chief Justice to play in an impeachment trial because the Senate can overrule everything."

Goldman also downplayed the House's long, slow march toward impeachment that began with the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report in April.

Though top House Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schiff did not embrace the prospect of an impeachment inquiry based on Mueller's findings — primarily that Trump repeatedly attempted to obstruct his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election — well more than half of House Democrats were seeking an impeachment inquiry by early September based on Mueller's report and July 24 public testimony, and before the Ukraine scandal erupted. Pelosi authorized the Judiciary Committee to go to court to sue for documents and testimony as part of an "impeachment investigation" based on the Mueller findings as well.

But Goldman said there was little energy for impeachment before the Ukraine news broke into the open.

"Fair to say there was no great momentum in favor of impeachment based on the Mueller report," Bharara said.

"That was clear," Goldman responded.

Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday accused YouTube of censoring his speech from the Senate floor last week about the impeachment trial — a speech in which he mentioned a name some believe to be the whistleblower who ignited the investigation into President Trump.

Mr. Paul called it "chilling and disturbing" ...

Representative Doug Collins (R., Ga.) cautioned on Wednesday that Democrats are leveraging the Justice Department's involvement in the Roger Stone case as a basis to continue their impeachment efforts against President Trump, adding that such efforts are "crazy."After President Trump complained Tuesday on Twitter that prosecutors' seven-to-nine-year sentencing recommendation constituted a “horrible and very unfair situation,” his Justice Department submitted a revised filing stating that the lengthy sentence “could be considered excessive and unwarranted.”Stone was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. All four of the prosecutors who recommended Stone’s seven-to-nine year sentence either resigned or quit the case after the DOJ weighed in."Yes," Collins responded when asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham whether Democrats are setting the Stone kerfuffle up as another basis for impeachment.Watch the latest video at foxnews.comThe Georgia Republican pointed to what he called the "hysterics" of House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and Representative Eric Swalwell in response the DOJ's involvement in the case."This is just crazy," said Collins, who is the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. "There's nothing happening here except [Attorney General] Bill Barr, who is the adult in the room, saying look, we got a problem here. This is nothing but the deep state lashing out again.""Barr had this information beforehand. He was not influenced by this. He had already begun to look at this," the Georgia Republican added.Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell suggested this week that Democrats could impeach the president over his DOJ's attempts to get Stone's sentence reduced, saying Democrats will not let Trump "torch this democracy.""This constant investigation, this constant demeaning of him, this constant trying to smear him, is only one reason," Collins said. "They have a clown car bunch of candidates for president. They're not going to win.""It's time for members of Congress in the House and the Senate to stand up on the Republican side and say, 'Enough of this crap out of the Democrats,'" Collins said, adding a call for Republicans to "share the message of conservatism that actually matters to all Americans."