Kelly defended fired impeachment inquiry witness Alexander Vindman and criticized Trump’s policiesThe former White House chief of staff John Kelly has backed the fired impeachment inquiry witness Alexander Vindman, launching a spirited defense of the former National Security Council official and criticizing the Trump administration across a range of issues.Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, told an audience at Drew University in New Jersey on Wednesday evening that Vindman was simply following the training he had received as a soldier when he flagged his concerns about Donald Trump’s phone conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, last summer.“He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave,” Kelly said. “He went and told his boss what he just heard.” Kelly’s comments were first reported in the Atlantic.Vindman, a Ukraine policy specialist, complied with a congressional subpoena and spoke out about hearing Trump tie US military aid for Ukraine to an agreement by Zelinskiy to investigate Joe Biden, Kelly said.Trump responded abrasively, tweeting: “He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut, which he actually has a military and legal obligation to do.”He added: “His incredible wife, Karen, who I have a lot of respect for, once pulled me aside & said strongly that John respects you greatly. When we are no longer here, he will only speak well of you.’ Wrong!”In his address, Kelly spoke of Trump’s Ukrainian phone call.“Through the Obama administration up until that phone call, the policy of the US was militarily to support Ukraine in their defensive fight against … the Russians. And so, when the president said that continued support would be based on X, that essentially changed. And that’s what that guy [Vindman] was most interested in.”But when Vindman heard Trump tell his counterpart he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, he understood he was hearing an “an illegal order”, Kelly said.He said: “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.”The former chief of staff also criticized the president’s attacks on certain media outlets – which Trump has often accused of being “fake news” and sought to sideline or restrict access to the White House – saying he did not view the media as “the enemy of the people”.“The media, in my view, and I feel very strongly about this, is not the enemy of the people. We need a free media,” he said, according to the Daily Record.Kelly continued: “That said, you have to be careful about what you are watching and reading, because the media has taken sides. So if you only watch Fox News, because it’s reinforcing what you believe, you are not an informed citizen.”Kelly also questioned Trump’s intervention in the case of Eddie Gallagher, the Navy Seal convicted of posing with the body of a dead Isis fighter. Trump quashed Gallagher’s demotion and then ordered the navy to drop the revocation of his special forces status, leading to the resignation of the navy secretary, Richard Spencer.The intervention, Kelly said, “was exactly the wrong thing to do. Had I been there, I think I could have prevented it.”Kelly said he took issue with Trump’s policies in a number of key areas. He said migrants to the US are “overwhelmingly good people” and “not all rapists” – a reference to comments Trump made about Mexican immigrants in 2015.“In fact, they’re overwhelmingly good people,” Kelly said. “They’re not all rapists and they’re not all murderers. And it’s wrong to characterize them that way. I disagreed with the president a number of times.”Trump’s border wall, he added, doesn’t need to extend “from sea to shining sea”.Kelly’s 75-minute address also touched a number of international topics. He said he considered the administration’s efforts to convince North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to abandon the country’s nuclear weapons program hopeless.Kelly said: “I never did think Kim would do anything other than play us for a while, and he did that fairly effectively.”Asked why he had accepted the White House position, Kelly said he didn’t know Trump before 2016, but had been “fascinated – not necessarily in a good way – but fascinated as to what that election meant to our country”.When he was approached to become secretary of homeland security, he said, his wife urged him to accept the position. “I, frankly, think he needs you and people like you,” she told him.

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.

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."

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been rising through the Democratic primary race, most likely because of the absolutely massive amount of money he's poured into it. And at a Chattanooga, Tennessee rally on Wednesday, the billionaire made it clear just what that money can do, Politico reports."In 2018, I helped flip the House" by bankrolling 21 Democratic challengers who eventually won Republican-held seats, Bloomberg said Wednesday. That led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to return to her role at the top of the legislative body, and "let Pelosi and the House do what the Constitution says they should do — hold the president accountable," Bloomberg continued. "They started the impeachment process but it all came from that."Yes, Bloomberg, who has never held national political office, is now claiming he's the reason impeachment happened. It's likely just his latest attempt at using his financial superiority to get under President Trump's skin — as if the millions of dollars worth of TV and social media ads he's purchased weren't enough.More stories from theweek.com Weinstein defense argues prosecutors have 'created a universe' in which 'women are not responsible' The sidelining of Elizabeth Warren A Bernie Sanders presidency would be remarkably familiar

Trump has shown the Republican senators who hoped he would change after his impeachment trial "how foolish, naive, or hypocritical they were."

U.S. President Donald Trump's re-election campaign and his Republican Party raised more than $60 million in January, against the backdrop of impeachment that threatened Trump's presidency. The Democratic-led House of Representatives impeached Trump on Dec. 18, making him only the third president in history to have that mark on his legacy. The Senate acquitted him on Feb. 5.

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is defending one of the subjects of his old boss' ire.Kelly at an event on Wednesday night discussed Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman after he was removed from his National Security Council job last week. Vindman had testified in the impeachment inquiry about how he was alarmed by President Trump's phone call with Ukraine and spoke up about it. "He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave," Kelly said of Vindman, The Atlantic reports. "He went and told his boss what he just heard."Kelly went on to compare hearing Trump's phone call with Ukraine to hearing an "illegal order," saying Vindman was correct to report it. "We teach them, 'Don’t follow an illegal order,'" Kelly said. "And if you're ever given one, you'll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.'"The White House has insisted that Vindman wasn't fired, but Trump said this week he "obviously wasn't happy with the job he did," and Vindman's lawyer said he was removed because Trump "decided to exact revenge.""Through the Obama administration up until that phone call, the policy of the U.S. was militarily to support Ukraine in their defensive fight against ... the Russians," Kelly said Wednesday. "And so, when the president said that continued support would be based on X, that essentially changed. And that's what that guy [Vindman] was most interested in." More stories from theweek.com Can Mike Bloomberg buy ironic meme glory? Yes, he can. In Twitter rampage, Trump attacks federal judge set to sentence Roger Stone A Bernie Sanders presidency would be remarkably familiar

YouTube removed a clip of Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) speaking on the Senate floor, in which he asked why Chief Justice John Roberts had blocked a question of his, which some have speculated contained the name of the Ukraine whistleblower.Paul told Politico Playbook that the tech platform’s decision was “dangerous and politically biased,” and denied knowing who the whistleblower was. “Nowhere in my speech did I accuse anyone of being a whistleblower,” he stated.“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure speech. Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people,” Paul added.YouTube told Politico that the decision was part of a larger effort to purge the name from the platform, and said that the company had already deleted “hundreds of videos and over ten thousand comments that contained the name.”“Videos, comments, and other forms of content that mention the leaked whistleblower’s name violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines and will be removed from YouTube,” YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said. She added that uploaders had “the option” to edit the name out of their footage and re-upload.After Roberts — who was tasked with reading aloud questions submitted by senators during the impeachment trial — refused to read Paul’s question on January 29, Paul submitted a second question the next day, and left the trial to hold an impromptu press conference after Roberts blocked the question a second time."It's very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists part of the Obama, Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president,” Paul said, claiming his question had nothing to do with the whistleblower.> Sen. @RandPaul: "It's very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists part of the Obama, Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president." https://t.co/e0kl6NUKFH pic.twitter.com/TAnetrmc40> > -- The Hill (@thehill) January 30, 2020“I’m the biggest defender of the whistleblower statutes,” Paul added, but argued that Democrats “shouldn’t be able to use statutes to somehow make a whole part of the discussion over this impeachment go away.”