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10/18/19

USA "the impeachment": Mulvaney digs a deep hole for Trump: and puts Trump at the center of emoluments and Ukraine controversies

For 39 minutes Thursday, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney turned the press briefing room into a sort of confession chamber, openly admitting to several acts that could deepen the legal predicament for the president. Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he has abused his office for personal and political gain.

Mulvaney’s retort to those charges came in a three-word mantra that now forms the central theme of the White House impeachment response: “Get over it.”

In admitting that Trump had personally intervened to award a multimillion-dollar summit to his own company, and that the president had also used taxpayer money as leverage to push a Ukrainian investigation into Democrats, Mulvaney embraced a classic Trumpian tactic: saying the quiet — and potentially illegal — part out loud.

“Did [Trump] also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server?” he said. “Absolutely, no question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”

The reference to the hacked Democratic National Committee’s email server elevated a Trump-backed conspiracy theory that Ukraine was involved in election interference in 2016, something U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly attributed to Russia.

In admitting that Trump had linked politics with his Ukraine policy, Mulvaney said that critics were simply overreacting.

“I have news for everybody: Get over it,” he said. “There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

"BINGO"

Read more atb ‘Get over it’: Mulvaney’s twin admissions put Trump at the center of emoluments and Ukraine controversies

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