U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland kept several Trump administration officials in the loop regarding his attempts to get Ukraine to launch investigations that President Trump would later bring up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Wall Street Journal reports.
During a July 25 call, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The Journal obtained emails Sondland sent to top officials, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, before that phone call, discussing his push for those investigations.
In a July 19 email, Sondland told Mulvaney, Perry, and others that he spoke to Zelensky and he was "prepared" for Trump's call. Zelensky "will assure him that he intends to run a fully transparent investigation and will 'turn over every stone,'" Sondland wrote. Text messages from the same time show that Sondland was passing along instructions to Zelensky from Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Several officials have testified in the House impeachment inquiry about Giuliani pursuing a shadow Ukraine agenda, which they found disturbing. Others have said in sworn depositions that they overheard Sondland and Trump discussing investigations. Sondland will testify this week in an open hearing before lawmakers. Read more about Sondland's emails at The Wall Street Journal. Catherine Garcia
The U.S. economy added 266,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department said Friday, coming in far ahead of expectations.
Analysts had been anticipating around 180,000 jobs being added, The New York Times notes.
"This blows away expectations," CNN's Christine Romans reported, while The Washington Post's Phillip Bump tweeted that he "said 'whoa' out loud" when he saw the number.
Hiring reached its highest level since January, as unemployment fell from 3.6 percent in October to 3.5 percent in November, The Associated Press reports. Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent, up 3.1 percent from last year.
The New York Times writes the report "offered a counterpoint to renewed anxieties about an escalating trade war and a weakening global economy," noting tens of thousands of General Motors workers returning after a strike helped boost the hiring totals. Brendan Morrow
The House Intelligence Committee's impeachment report says that Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer and fixer, "had three phone calls with a number associated with OMB," or Office of Management and Budget, on April 23, and another 13-minute call from the OMB-associated number in August, both key moments in Trump's alleged Ukraine pressure campaign. But the phone number in question may not actually be from OMB, which froze $400 million in military and security aide for Ukraine at Trump's direction for contested reasons, the White House tells The New York Times and CNN.
The number, (202) 395-0000, is a generic White House switchboard number that could also have connected Giuliani to the White House political shop, the National Security Counsel, or a couple of other White House offices, The Wall Street Journal reports. A senior Intelligence Committee official told CNN that the committee had linked the number to OMB "based on public directories" and continues "to investigate these call records as part of our ongoing work." The White House and Giuliani have declined to turn over subpoenaed records that could "clarify" who Giuliani was talking to at the White House so frequently "at key points during the scheme," the official said.
An OMB official told the Times that a review of call logs showed no one in the office spoke to Giuliani around the times of the April and August calls, and a White House official said Giuliani didn't speak with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff and titular director of OMB. Giuliani, who says he did speak with Mulvaney, seems less sure. He told the Times on Tuesday he "never discussed military assistance" to Ukraine in his calls with OMB, adding "I am expert on so many things it could have been some very esoteric subject." On Wednesday, he texted CNN that he doesn't "remember calling OMB and not about military aid never knew anything about it." Peter Weber
After Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended NATO receptions at Buckingham Palace and Lancaster House on Monday evening, he returned to his London hotel and quietly slipped downstairs meet with the Hamilton Society, "a conservative group that included a small number of wealthy Republican donors," CNN reported Thursday, citing an invitation to the event and interviews with several attendees. The off-the-books gathering "only serves to heighten speculation that Pompeo may be eyeing a run for the Senate in Kansas next year," CNN says.
Pompeo called reports that he is preparing to contest an opening Senate seat next year "completely false" as recently as this week, and his political ambitions did not come up when he was mingling with the wealthy Republicans on Monday night, one attendee told CNN, "but everyone was talking about them after he departed." The attendees had to leave their cellphones outside the room so there would be no recording of Pompeo's remarks.
President Trump also met with donors during the London summit, only his Tuesday "roundtable with supporters" was listed on his official schedule. The fundraiser, hosted by Trump Victory, was expected to raise $3 million for Trump's re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee, a Trump campaign official told CNN. Peter Weber