Alexandra Hall Hall, the British diplomat in charge of explaining Brexit to the US government, Congress and public, ended her 33-year foreign service career saying she is no longer prepared to “peddle half-truths” about Brexit on behalf of a government she does not trust.

In her searing resignation letter addressed to deputy ambassador Michael Tatham and dated December 3, she accused politicians of a “reluctance to address honesty.”

 “I have been increasingly dismayed by the way in which our political leaders have tried to deliver Brexit, with reluctance to address honesty, even with our own citizens, the challenges and trade-offs which Brexit involves; the use of misleading or disingenuous arguments about the implications of the various options before us; and some behaviour towards our institutions, which, were it happening in another country, we would almost certainly as diplomats have received instructions to register our concern.”

The 55-year old senior British diplomat in Washington said her position had become “unbearable personally and untenable professionally”.

Her letter, seen by US broadcaster CNN, was said to have been shared widely with colleagues in the diplomatic service.

The Foreign Office said it would not comment on details of her resignation. Ms Hall is the second senior diplomatic figure to quit the mission in Washington in dramatic fashion this year.

On September 10, the UK ambassador Lord Darroch was forced to step down amid a storm over leaked memos in which he branded Donald Trump’s administration ‘inept and insecure’.

Source: Presstv

US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has sought to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s cold reception at a NATO summit in Britain, as footage emerged of other leaders mocking the US president.

In an online election ad released Thursday, Biden said portrayed himself as someone who is highly experienced in foreign affairs and can restore America’s global standing.

Biden, 77, blasted Trump as a “dangerously incompetent” and “incapable” head of state.

“The world sees Trump for what he is; insincere, ill-informed, [and] corrupt,” he says in the video. “And if we give Donald Trump four more years, we’ll have a great deal of difficulty of ever being able to recover America’s standing in the world.”

His online ad features a video of other world leaders mocking Trump at a Buckingham Palace reception held alongside the NATO summit this week.

Biden has touched on Trump’s belligerent style on the world stage repeatedly this week as he travels across the state of Iowa. With his six terms as a senator and two terms as vice president, Biden believes the international experience is a winner for him in the upcoming presidential election.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Biden said he not only has a better demeanor and skill set for the job than Trump, but he also has more relevant experience, deeper knowledge and more extensive relationships abroad than his Democratic competitors.

During this week’s NATO summit to mark the 70th anniversary of the military alliance, Trump branded the leader of America’s northern neighbor “two-faced” after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to gossip about Trump in comments caught on camera and microphone.

Trudeau was seen standing in a huddle with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain’s Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II at Tuesday evening’s Buckingham Palace reception for NATO leaders.

Trudeau could be heard saying incredulously, “he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top.” Trudeau confirmed that was a reference to Trump’s long and unscheduled press conference earlier Tuesday.

Trudeau also said: “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.” He explained Wednesday that was in reference to Trump’s decision to hold the next Group of Seven meeting at Camp David, the US presidential retreat.

Source: Presstv

The next phase of impeachment begins Wednesday in the US Congress as lawmakers weigh charges against Donald Trump, after the high-stakes inquiry into the president detailed “overwhelming” evidence of abuse of power and obstruction.

Four constitutional scholars will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the first of a series of hearings to establish the gravity of Trump’s alleged crimes.

On Tuesday, congressional Democrats made a forceful case that Trump should be removed from office for abusing his powers by pressuring Ukraine for dirt on a Democratic election rival.

“The president placed his personal political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the US presidential election process and endangered US national security,” said the final report on the House Intelligence Committee’s probe, led by lawmaker Adam Schiff.

“President Trump and his senior officials may see nothing wrong with using the power of the office of the president to pressure a foreign country to help the president’s reelection campaign,” it said.

“However, the Founding Fathers prescribed a remedy for a chief executive who places his personal interests above those of the country: impeachment.”

– Articles of impeachment –

The report is expected to form the basis for the Judiciary Committee to draw up formal charges — articles of impeachment — that could include bribery, abuse of power, obstruction and contempt of Congress.

Democrats reportedly aim to have the articles presented for a vote to the entire House of Representatives before Christmas on December 25.

If they pass as expected, Trump would then stand trial for removal in the Republican-controlled Senate, where he is expected to be exonerated.

On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham dismissed both the report and the impeachment process.

“At the end of a one-sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” she said in a statement.

The report mapped out a months-long scheme by Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and senior diplomats and White House staffers to pressure Ukraine’s president into investigating Joe Biden, the current favorite to win the Democratic White House nomination in 2020.

Trump also pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a “conspiracy theory” that it was Ukraine — not Russia — that interfered in the 2016 US election, to benefit the Democrats.

In both cases, the report said, Trump conditioned nearly $400 million in US military aid and a high-profile summit with Zelensky on Kiev opening the investigations, which Democrats have said amounts to bribery.

The report also makes a strong case for charges of obstruction against Trump, for refusing to provide documents to investigators, preventing witnesses from appearing and threatening some of those who did appear.

– Legal scholars to testify –

To counter Republican attacks on the impeachment process, Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler has invited a mix of liberal and conservative constitutional scholars to testify Wednesday.

They include Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School, Jonathan Turley of The George Washington University Law School and Michael Gerhardt from The University of North Carolina School of Law.

Turley, a conservative, has called Trump’s behavior inappropriate but said Democrats need much more evidence to prove their case.

“Abuse of power is impeachable, but it is the most difficult of potential impeachment claims,” he wrote on his website.

“If Democrats continue with their plan to impeach Trump by the end of December, they would be presenting the thinnest record and fastest impeachment investigation in history.”

Gerhardt told Slate that the allegations against the president appear impeachable.

However, he said, whatever the Constitution says, politics and public opinion are involved, especially with an election coming up next year.

The authors of the Constitution “thought that the American people would care about facts, the American people would largely become educated, and they would care about the Constitution,” he said.

“And it’s not entirely clear that they do.”

Source: AFP

NATO leaders will tell U.S President Donald Trump on Wednesday they are spending billions more dollars on their militaries in the hope that he pares back his attacks on the Western alliance.

In formal talks following a Buckingham Palace reception on Tuesday to celebrate 70 years of NATO, European leaders led by Germany and France aim to tell Trump they will not be treated as junior partners as they confront global conflicts.

Despite Trump’s accusations on Tuesday that allies were “delinquent” in their failure to spend as much as the United States on their armed forces, Europe, Turkey and Canada will use the gathering at a luxury golf club north of London to argue they will spend $400 billion collectively on defence by 2024.

“If we invest money and risk our soldiers’ lives… we should be clear on NATO’s fundamentals,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter, adding that on Wednesday he would “defend the interests of France and Europe.”

That is likely to include a push to broaden NATO politically to consider a bigger role for the alliance in the Middle East and possibly Africa, although Berlin and Paris must first seek NATO support for a “wise persons” group to draw up reform plans.

In a final communique, NATO allies will recommit to their pledge to defend each other, while Britain is also expected to put six warships, two fighter squadrons and thousands of troops at NATO’s disposal to meet a U.S. demand for European armies to be more combat-ready.

NATO will also warn China for the first time that it is monitoring Beijing’s growing military might, agreeing to gradually prepare the alliance to defend against any possible future hostilities, in arenas ranging from the Arctic to computer networks.

But the debate is unlikely to be easy.

Tuesday’s gathering in London was marked by testy exchanges between Trump and Macron over the future of transatlantic ties, while the U.S. leader reiterated his criticism of Germany for not spending enough on defence, seemingly unaware of Berlin’s new defence plans to reach a NATO spending target by 2031.

“I’m a politician, and I’m used to being criticised for good rhetoric but bad substance. In the case of NATO it is the opposite. We have had bad rhetoric but extremely good substance,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told diplomats and experts at an event in London on Tuesday.

Macron also accused Turkey of working with Islamic State proxies in Syria, although Canada’s leader played down tensions.

“NATO has survived because we’ve always had frank conversations,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

(REUTERS)

US Democratic lawmakers at the House Intelligence Committee have accused President Donald Trump of abusing his power in office in his conduct toward Ukraine.

In a much-awaited report released on Tuesday, Democrats said Trump solicited foreign interference to boost his re-election chances, undermined national security and ordered an “unprecedented” campaign to obstruct Congress.

Trump “placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests” of the US and not only “sought to undermine the integrity” presidential election process, but also endangered US national security.

In the 300-page report, the House Democrats also leveled allegations of sweeping abuse of power by Trump and said he used US military aid and the prospect of a White House visit to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations into one of his political rivals in the 2020 election.

“The evidence is clear that President Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and a debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election,” the House Democrats said. “These investigations were designed to benefit his 2020 presidential reelection campaign.”

The lawmakers argued that “damage … will be long-lasting and potentially irrevocable if the President’s ability to stonewall Congress goes unchecked.”

The US House Judiciary Committee has called Trump’s refusal to participate in an impeachment hearing “unfortunate” and said that it is a sign that Trump has something to hide.

US Congressman Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee leading an impeachment inquiry into Trump, said in a news conference after the release of the report that evidence for impeaching Trump was overwhelming.

Schiff declined to say whether he believes Trump should be removed from office, but he issued a stark warning about the danger of keeping a president with no boundaries in office.

“This is the result of a president who believes he is beyond indictment, beyond impeachment, beyond any form of accountability and indeed above the law. And that is a very dangerous thing for this country to have a president who believes they are above the law,” Schiff said during the press conference.

The report serves as the backbone of the Democrats’ impeachment proceedings against Trump, who is accused of withholding military aid to Ukraine, to force Kiev to open a probe into his Democratic political rival Joe Biden. Trump has denied the allegation and rejected the impeachment as a witch-hunt.

Trump slams report as ‘sham’

The White House responded to the published report on Tuesday afternoon and denounced it as a “one-sided sham process” that found “evidence of nothing.”

“This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations. Chairman [Adam] Schiff’s report reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.

Behind closed doors late Tuesday, the Democratic-led panel voted 13 to 9 to officially adopt and issue the report to the House Judiciary Committee, which is tasked with drafting articles of impeachment against the president.

The report is expected to form the basis for the Judiciary Committee to draw up formal charges or articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.

Opinion polls show Americans are bitterly divided over the impeachment.

Source: Presstv

NATO leaders are gathering in the British capital, London, for the military alliance’s 70th anniversary amid tensions on multiple fronts.

Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is expected to call for “unity” at the meeting later today.

But Johnson’s call for solidarity will do little to conceal the deep tensions in the military alliance.

US President, Donald Trump, who arrived in London earlier, has heightened tensions ahead of the meeting by verbally attacking French President, Emmanuel Macron.

In early November, Macron described NATO as “brain dead” in an interview with the British magazine, The Economist.

Hitting back, Trump said: “You look at what happened with the Yellow Vests, they’ve had a rough year, you can’t go around making statements like that about NATO. It’s very disrespectful”.

Beyond the US-France spat, there are broader tensions within NATO, notably over Turkey’s drift towards Russia.

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wants the Western military alliance to recognize the Kurdish-led groups Turkey is fighting in Syria as “terrorists” but NATO disagrees.

Erdogan said yesterday that Turkey will oppose a NATO defence plan for the Baltic states unless the military alliance recognises Turkey’s foes in Syria as “terrorists”.

There are also broader Turkey-NATO tensions, as demonstrated by Turkey’s row with Greece and Cyprus over offshore natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.  

The combination of these tensions and internal rows have led some experts, notably Douglas Lute and Nicholas Burns (both former US permanent representatives to NATO) to argue that the military alliance is in “crisis”.

Source: Presstv