Trump sent out 142 tweets on January 23 during his Senate impeachment trial.

A Swiss court upheld on Friday the conviction of an ex-aide to Attorney General Michael Lauber for accepting gifts from Russian prosecutors, including a week-long bear hunt in Siberia's Kamchatka peninsula, but imposed no penalty on him. The Federal Criminal Court appellate division ruling against the federal police investigator is the latest headache for Lauber, who himself faces impeachment proceedings over what critics call his botched inquiry into corruption in world soccer. The man, identified only as "Viktor K" given restrictions on reporting the names of defendants in Swiss criminal proceedings, worked for the federal police agency but was assigned to Lauber's office.

A Republican senator broke with her party Thursday to describe a former Pentagon chief's searing rebuke of Donald Trump as "necessary and overdue," and revealed she was struggling with whether to support the US president's re-election. Lisa Murkowski's comments marked a major break with Trump within the Republican camp, which has largely held together through various crises including his impeachment process and the president's current threat to use military force against protesters. Murkowski was referring to the extraordinary statement Wednesday by Trump's former defense secretary Jim Mattis who accused the president of trying to "divide" Americans and failing to provide "mature leadership" as the country reels from days of protests.

An audit of thousands of old case files by Ukrainian prosecutors found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Hunter Biden, the former prosecutor general, who had launched the audit, told Reuters. Ruslan Ryaboshapka was in the spotlight last year as the man who would decide whether to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in what became a key issue in the impeachment of President Donald Trump. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Ryaboshapka as "100 percent my person" on a call in July 2019 in which Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, the man who became his main rival in the 2020 presidential race.

Battered by crisis after crisis, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be in political peril as never before. Since taking office in 2017, Trump has weathered storm after storm, always emerging with a fighting chance at re-election. After he survived an impeachment trial that saw him acquitted by the Republican-led Senate on Feb. 5, things looked up.

Ukraine’s recently appointed prosecutor general, 41-year-old Iryna Venediktova, is a woman to watch. The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, expects her to investigate and prosecute his predecessor. She seems more than enthusiastic about that, and it’s a process that's been set up from the start to (once again) try to smear Donald Trump’s leading challenger for the presidency of the United States, Joe Biden.On the night of May 19, Venediktova personally approved the beginning of criminal proceedings against former President Petro Poroshenko for high treason and abuse of office. The move was triggered by leaked recordings of confidential conversations that allegedly took place in 2015-2016 between Poroshenko and then Vice President Biden, as well as John Kerry, who was the U.S. secretary of state at the time.Before her appointment as prosecutor general in March, Venediktova—a graduate of Ukraine's police academy who holds the rank of captain—had served Zelensky as acting chief of the State Bureau of Investigations (DBR). She reportedly launched investigations into Poroshenko while in that position, and is said to have clashed with the well-respected prosecutor general at the time, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, because of the way she conducted them. Ryaboshapka was dismissed in March, clearing the way for her to take his position.The nature of the private Biden-Poroshenko recordings and the way they were leaked is reminiscent of the way the Soviet KGB exploited wiretaps and disinformation, but that has not prevented Zelensky and Venediktova from sensationalizing what’s now been put on the record.Who Leaked Biden’s Calls to Ukraine?It was first presented at a press conference given on May 19 by Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who has a very pro-Moscow past. Derkach, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a graduate of the former Soviet Union’s Higher School of KGB, the foreign intelligence training facility now known as the FSB Academy. In recent years Derkach has worked closely with Trump’s personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to promote accusations that Biden as vice president strong-armed the Ukrainian government to try to protect the interests of his son, Hunter Biden, who was serving in a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma. Anyone familiar with the history of Ukrainian corruption knows that Biden’s pressure on the government in 2015 and 2016 was part of a major campaign by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, as well as the Obama administration, to get Poroshenko to clean up his act. Hanging in the balance were $40 billion in IMF loan guarantees, with a $1 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. opening the way.At the time, one key symbol of reform was the replacement of Poroshenko’s long-time crony, Chief Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was notorious for not convicting any major oligarchs or public officials known for corruption—even those from the infamous regime ousted by the Maidan Revolution in 2014. Starting in the mid-1990s, general prosecutors in Ukraine acquired reputations for exploiting corruption rather than fighting it. Often, prosecutions in Ukraine have been launched to shake down the targets rather than put them in prison.According to an extensive report in the British newspaper The Independent based on multiple interviews with lower level prosecutors, an investigation of the owner of Burisma, the company with Hunter Biden on the board, fit that shakedown scenario precisely. “Neither Shokin nor Poroshenko wanted to investigate [Burisma owner Mykola​] Zlochevsky,” former deputy prosecutor David Sakvarelidze told The Independent. “They simply began a criminal case, arrested a few assets, and began negotiating with the corruptioneer for a bribe.”So, there are no real revelations in the Biden-Poroshenko conversations. What’s revealing is the use that Venediktova, Derkach, and Zelensky are making of them.“The leaked recordings are a nothingburger,” says Poroshenko’s defense lawyer, Ilya Novikov, borrowing a term from Biden’s spokesman. “But Venediktova rushed to open the case late in the evening after Derkach had published the leaks,” Novikov told The Daily Beast. “That to us indicates that President Zelensky personally expected his prosecutor to begin the process before his own press conference [the next day].” In fact, there is no mention of Burisma on the Derkach recordings. But the tough talk does force Ukrainian listeners to realize once again, as they did when they read the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call last year, just how dependent on Washington Kyiv has become.Poroshenko clearly was reluctant to dismiss Shokin, who had been “his” prosecutor on and off for a dozen years, well before Poroshenko (an oligarch who made his fortune selling chocolate candy) moved up the political ladder to the presidency. Poroshenko can be heard on the recording telling Biden he’s willing to ditch Shokin even though, according to Poroshenko, Shokin had done nothing wrong. In a subsequent call, Biden congratulates Poroshenko on appointing a new general prosecutor.“I know there’s a lot more of that that has to be done,” says Biden. “But I really, I really think that’s good, and I understand you’re working with the Rada [Ukraine’s parliament] in the coming days on a number of additional laws to secure the IMF [loan guarantees], but congratulations on installing the new prosecutor general. It’s going to be critical for him to work quickly to repair the damage Shokin did, and I’m a man of my word, and now that the new prosecutor general is in place we’re ready to move forward in signing that new $1 billion loan guarantee.”When Derkach presented these recordings to the press in May, he publicly accused Biden of offering Poroshenko $1 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money “in exchange for maintaining Burisma schemes and international corruption.” As Derkach described his version of the events,  "Biden leaves for Kyiv to put pressure on Petro Oleksiyovych [Poroshenko] regarding Shokin. There's a powerful argument… in Biden's pocket... a $1 billion loan guarantee... such was a price to save [Hunter] Biden from prison." Then Derkach took the recordings to Venediktova. If charged, Poroshenko could face up to 15 years in prison.When President Zelensky marked the end of his first year in power the day after Venediktova drew up the treason charges against Poroshenko, he left no room to doubt he supported them and found the recordings incriminating.  “I think it’s not the last sign that Ukrainians will see. The prosecutors, law enforcement bodies should react,” said Zelensky. “The prosecutor general of Ukraine registered criminal proceedings at the request of deputy [Andriy] Derkach yesterday. They will investigate.”During the impeachment proceedings that grew out of the U.S. President Trump’s notorious July 25, 2019, phone call pressuring Zelensky for dirt on Biden, Zelensky did his best to avoid taking sides. That will be harder to do if Venediktova continues to pursue the treason case based on Biden conversations. The Ukrainian president still enjoys rare popularity with an approval rating of more than 60 percent, but that is a steep decline from nearly 80 percent last year and Zelensky is the target of increased criticism. Marking the first anniversary of his presidency by threatening his predecessor with accusations of high treason does not look good. “I do not believe Zelensky,” Kristina Berdyskykh, a leading Ukrainian political journalist, said on Ukraina 24 television. “All young and progressive members have left Zelensky’s team.”As these controversies develop, Zelensky’s prosecutor will be at the center of them. Less than two years ago, Iryna Venediktova was teaching law at a university in the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. “She specialized in theory of civil and corporate law at a not very significant faculty, not on criminal justice,” a civil society activist in Kharkiv, Volodymir Rysenko, told The Daily Beast. But in a matter of months, Venediktova’s career jumped from a university teacher to a seat at the Rada. She is a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, and she was made number 3 on its electoral list last year, virtually guaranteeing she would get a seat. Then she was given another head spinning job when Zelensky appointed her to be the acting director of the State Bureau of Investigation.Finally, in March, Venediktova was appointed to be Ukraine’s prosecutor general, the first woman to hold that position.“When we look at Venediktova from Kharkiv, we see nothing to be proud of,” says Rysenko. “We hear Venediktova accusing people in her interviews without any understanding of what presumption of innocence really means.” “She has little experience for such a huge job and was appointed on the basis of being a political buddy of Mr. Zelensky,” says global affairs analyst Michael Bociurkiw. “She’s reversing the reforms of her predecessor which were lauded by civil society, diplomats and the international community. She has already made several controversial appointments, reinstated incompetent or politically tainted prosecutors rightfully sacked by her predecessor, and blocked civil society and foreign partners from vetting some appointments.” The executive director of the non-governmental Anticorruption Action Center, Daria Kaleniuk, does not see any legitimate grounds for triggering a criminal case of high treason based on the recordings. “In my opinion Derkach deserves to be investigated for treason for his long-term work with people like Giuliani, for spreading disinformation and conspiracies, which undermine U.S.-Ukraine strategic relationships," Kaleniuk told The Daily Beast. "I think Zelensky still clearly indicates that he doesn’t want to interfere in the American elections and to support any side there; but I am concerned he has appointed Venediktova, who among other strange things—like blocking prosecution reform—makes this nonsense case based on Derkach audio. It shows the lack of professionalism of both the prosecutor general and the president.”For progressives in Ukraine, a huge question looming over the treason case is how the Biden-Poroshenko recordings were obtained in the first place, and who passed them on to Derkach. He claims he got them from some “investigative journalists,” but nobody knows the journalists’ names.Kyiv-based experts following the Bidens, Burisma and Trump ordeal in detail want prosecutor Venediktova to pay serious attention to the source of the leaked recordings."I personally know Derkach,” says Yevgeny Kiselev of the TV show Real Politics. “He sounds like he is the bridge between the Ukrainian and Russian special services. In our conversations he bragged about his meetings and connections in Moscow; his father, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, was involved in publishing compromising recordings to discredit President [Leonid] Kuchma and now Derkach junior is leaking very dubious recordings." "The former foreign minister, Pavel Kilimkin, told me that Poroshenko, Biden and Kerry had lots and lots of conversations about financial aid and about the Congress approving money,” Kiselev told The Daily Beast. “He also said that Poroshenko used to invite all sorts of people to those virtual conversations, mostly to show how important he was; one of them must have recorded the conversations—that is a matter for an investigation.”The Daily Beast asked Prosecutor General Venediktova if her office has also been investigating the source of the recordings but did not receive any answer.—Christopher Dickey also contributed to this article.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. 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As cities reel under protest and violence, Black Lives Matter leaders say the president has failed his country * George Floyd protests: live coverage * Robert Reich: the Trump presidency is over“Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims. I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon – and I mean very soon – come to an end.”These were the words of Donald Trump, not in May 2020 but July 2016, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the national convention in Cleveland. For many observers, there was a distinct echo of Richard Nixon’s 1968 acceptance speech – “We see cities enveloped in smoke and flame” – and a foreboding that history could take a newly dark and dangerous turn.For three years, the first president elected without political or military experience rode his luck and skirted past disaster. In the fourth year, the fates demanded payback.Not even Trump’s harshest critics can blame him for a virus believed to have come from a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, nor for an attendant economic collapse, nor for four centuries of slavery, segregation, police brutality and racial injustice.But they can, and do, point to how he made a bad situation so much worse. The story of Trump’s presidency was arguably always leading to this moment, with its toxic mix of weak moral leadership, racial divisiveness, crass and vulgar rhetoric and an erosion of norms, institutions and trust in traditional information sources. Taken together, these ingredients created a tinderbox poised to explode when crises came.Trump, they say, was uniquely ill-qualified for this moment. He tried to wish away the threat of the coronavirus and failed to prepare, then paid no heed to how communities of colour bore the brunt of its health and economic consequences. As unrest now grips dozens of cities, he speaks an authoritarian language of “thugs”, “vicious dogs” and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.The nation waits in vain for a speech that might heal wounds, find a common sense of purpose and acknowledge the generational trauma of African Americans. That would require deep reading, cultural sensitivity and human empathy – none of which are known to be among personal attributes of Trump, who defines himself in opposition to Barack Obama.“He is obviously in way over his head,” said LaTosha Brown, a civil rights activist and co-founder of Black Voters Matter.“He doesn’t have a clue. He’s a TV personality. He has a cult following that’s centred around this white power broker persona rooted in white supremacy and racism. Wherever he goes, he carries that role and that kind of persona, but ultimately right now with what we’re looking for in this country is real leadership. He is incapable of providing that because that’s not who he is.”Brown added: “He’s a personality. He’s used to these dog whistles and, instead of trying to uproot division and seeing that the citizens are actually in pain and hurting, he doesn’t have the capacity to address that. He actually adds fuel to the flames and shows how fundamentally intellectually disconnected he is from what is happening and also how ill-prepared he is as a leader to respond to that.”Trump is not much a child playing with matches as an arsonist hellbent on burning it all down, Brown warned.“If it would take the destruction of the country for him to protect his position, he is willing to do that. He has shown that he is willing to kill every single thing in this country, including its people, if it protects him.> He’s willing to kill democracy. He is willing to kill any sense of real respect or trust in his government> > LaTosha Brown“He’s willing to kill democracy. He is willing to kill any sense of real respect or trust in his government. He is willing to kill America’s international and global relationships. He is a destroyer.”Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group, said of the current moment: “This is the type of controversy that Trump feels most at home in.“He didn’t create hostility and division, but he incites it. He creates incentives for it to thrive. He has elevated and put people around him that do that as well.”The president’s suggestion of moral equivalence between white nationalists and anti-fascist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 failed to loosen his grip on the Republican party. Perhaps it tightened. At the start of this re-election year, feeling emboldened by his acquittal in a Senate impeachment trial and a robust economy, Trump was confident of his re-election chances.Now, with health, economic and social crises feeding off each other, polls show him trailing rival Joe Biden. But the situation remains volatile and unpredictable. The president has sought to scapegoat anti-fascist protesters, and there would be little surprise if he returned to Nixonian law-and-order rhetoric to rally Republicans and lay a trap for Democrats, portraying them as “soft on crime”.“Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors,” Trump tweeted on Sunday, even as protesters gathered outside the White House for the third straight day. “These people are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!”Biden has billed the election as a battle for the soul of the nation – the potential to lurch deeper into disarray with a second Trump term, or to reset, rebuild and plot a new direction. The stakes keep getting higher by the day.Robinson said: “Presidential leadership, when it comes in the form of real action, is incredibly important.“When a leader can hear the demand and the concerns and work to solve the problem, that’s the power of democracy. President Trump is not interested in either. He’s not interested in leading or solving problems. Like a lot of things he does, he’s treating this as a game.“The problem here is that we can focus this simply on Trump or we can also focus on all of those folks that have enabled Trump: the Republican leadership, the corporation that may make statements in support of this work but, on the other hand, do all sorts of things to prop up, support, donate to Donald Trump. You don’t get Trump and Trumpism without a whole host of institutions and individuals that support and enable him.”DeRay Mckesson, a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement, said: “Nobody’s a magician, so I don’t expect Biden to change everything on day one, but the demands should be for him to change as much of this by the end as humanly possible.“If Trump has reminded us of anything, it’s that the government can move as fast as it wants to and nobody, no person of colour, no poor person is going to win if Trump is the president again. So I’m not interested in Trump. I am interested in a plan from Biden’s team around ending police violence. I think that needs to come now. I think it is, frankly, late, and I’m hoping to see it soon.”Trump’s unconventional inaugural address in January 2017 is best remembered for a single phrase: “American carnage”. His entire presidency may be remembered for it too.

The No. 2 official in the Pentagon's office of inspector general, Glenn Fine, resigned Tuesday, several weeks after he was effectively removed as head of a special board to oversee auditing of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus economic relief package. On May 15, Trump fired the State Department's inspector general, Steve Linick, whose office was critical of what it saw as political bias in the State Department’s management. In April, Trump also fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who forwarded to Congress a whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to the president’s impeachment in the House.

As diverse as they were in eloquence and empathy, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each had his own way of piercing the noise of catastrophe and reaching people. Impeachment placed one indelible mark on Trump's time in office. At every turn Trump has asserted the numbers would be worse without his leadership.

Democratic super PACs are reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending against a conservative House candidate in New Mexico. But a closer look at the television ads and direct mail pieces suggest that the groups are actually looking to boost her candidacy at the expense of a wealthier, more business-friendly primary opponent.“New Mexico Republicans have to choose,” declared a mail piece sent last week by the super PAC Women Vote, which is affiliated with the progressive-leaning women’s group EMILY’s List.The mailer offers recipients two options in the competitive primary in New Mexico’s second district: Claire Chase, who it labels a “Santa Fe corporate lobbyist” who “called Trump an a**hole,” or Yvette Herrell, who it says is “100% loyal to President Trump” and has earned the endorsements of “eleven pro-gun sheriffs and Cowboys for Trump.”The mail piece appears designed to boost Herrell’s prospects in next week’s GOP primary contest, where loyalty to Trump has been the central issue of the campaign. But for accounting purposes, Women Vote has described the mailer differently. The only expenditures in the race the group has reported to the Federal Election Commission are about $23,000 on mailers opposing both Herrell and Chase.Both candidates have pledged their fealty to Trump. But each has accused the other of insufficient loyalty to the president. Chase, the former head of New Mexico’s oil and gas lobby, endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Carly Fiorina during the 2016 presidential election in a Facebook post, subsequently unearthed by Breitbart News, that dubbed Trump an “a**hole unworthy of the office.” She’s since recanted that view. Chase “voted for President Trump in the general, celebrated his election, supports him now and thinks he has done a great job as President,” a spokesperson told Newsweek last year.Chase has shot back with allegations that Herrell’s backing for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the same Republican presidential primary amounted to “undermin[ing] Trump’s campaign.” She’s also blamed Herrell, a former state representative, for Trump’s impeachment this year. Had Herrell won her 2018 House race, Chase claimed, Trump might never have been impeached.In that battle over who is more loyal to the president, EMILY’s List’s PAC has come down firmly on Herrell’s side. Its mailers appear to be part of a larger, coordinated strategy among Democratic political spenders to boost Herrell at the expense of Chase. Herrell has been endorsed by the political arm of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, but the campaign to promote her appears to signal that Democrats believe Chase would be a tougher candidate for freshman Democrat Rep. Xochitl Torres Small to face in the general.That larger advocacy effort suggests Democrats are working to boost Herrell’s primary candidacy through tactics that obscure their true ideological leanings. EMILY’s List did not return a request for comment. The strategy of surreptitiously courting another party’s voters is not a new one, and Democrats in particular have used it in the past. In the waning days of the 2018 midterm elections, the Indiana Democratic Party began running Facebook ads attempting to boost a Libertarian Senate candidate at the expense of the Republican in the race. Just this year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched ads boosting one of four Republican candidates in a primary to take on a vulnerable South Carolina Democrat. Most famously, former Missouri Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign purchased ads supporting the 2012 primary campaign of Republican Todd Akin. Akin won the nomination, only to subsequently implode and hand a win to McCaskill.Disgraced Former Rep. Todd Akin Donated to Steve King After ‘White Supremacy’ CommentsAs the Women Vote mailers went out, another Democratic super PAC, Patriot Majority PAC, was going on air with a $250,000 television ad campaign that relayed similar messages to Republican primary voters—down to the very same data points in the Women Vote mail piece.“There’s Santa Fe lobbyist Claire Chase, who opposed President Trump, calling him an (expletive) unworthy of the office,” says Patriot Majority’s ad, first reported by the Associated Press last week. “Or there’s Yvette Herrell. She’s 100% loyal to Trump, backed by 11 pro-gun sheriffs and Cowboys for Trump.”Like Women Vote, Patriot Majority reported those ads to the FEC as opposing both Herrell and Chase.Both candidates are vying for the chance to take on Torres Small, who flipped a Republican seat in 2018 that the GOP desperately wants to retake this cycle. The race has already drawn some big spenders, including House Freedom Action, the political group associated with the hardline House Freedom Caucus, which is going to bat for Herrell. The group has dubbed Chase a “Trump-hating liberal.”It’s also drawn the involvement of other strange political bedfellows. Republican Women for Progress PAC, a group founded by a pair of anti-Trump GOP operatives, has purchased Facebook ads backing Torres Small, according to Facebook’s political ad database. The group also purchased ads opposing Herrell’s 2018 House candidacy.In spite of its branding, Republican Women for Progress is largely funded by a handful of wealthy Democrats, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Kathryn Murdoch, the wife of former 21st Century Fox executive James Murdoch.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.