Documents released late Friday show Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in contact with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the months before the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was abruptly recalled.
The State Department released the documents to the group American Oversight in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They show that Pompeo talked with Giuliani on March 26 and March 29.
Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said the documents reveal “a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.”
Last week, former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators she felt “kneecapped” by a “smear campaign” Giuliani led against her. She was withdrawn from her post in Ukraine in May.
The documents released Friday also include a report, that appears with Trump hotel stationery, that appears to summarize a Jan. 23, 2019, interview with Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Victor Shokin. The summary says Giuliani and two business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were present.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested last month on a four-count indictment that includes charges of conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsification of records. The men had key roles in Giuliani’s efforts to launch a Ukrainian corruption investigation against Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
In the document, Shokin claims he was removed from his position under pressure from Biden.
A second memo appears to be a summary of an interview with Yuri Lutsenko, also a former prosecutor general of Ukraine, conducted in the presence of Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman. Lutsenko is quoted raising questions about compensation that Hunter Biden received from the Ukrainian oil company Burisma.

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A Hong Kong university campus under siege for more than a week was a deserted wasteland Saturday, with a handful of protesters holed up in hidden refuges across the trashed grounds, as the city’s focus turned to local elections.
The siege neared its end as some protesters at Polytechnic University on the Kowloon peninsula desperately sought a way out and others vowed not to surrender, days after some of the worst violence since anti-government demonstrations escalated in June.
“If they storm in, there are a lot of places for us to hide,” said Sam, a 21-year-old student, who was eating two-minute noodles in the cafeteria, while plotting his escape.
Another protester, Ron, vowed to remain until the end with other holdouts, adding, “The message will be clear that we will never surrender.”

A protester who calls himself “Riot Chef” and said he was a volunteer cook for protesters smokes in a canteen in Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Nov. 23, 2019.Many arrests
About 1,000 people have been arrested in the siege in the Chinese-ruled city, about 300 of them younger than 18.
Police have set up high plastic barricades and a fence on the perimeter of the campus. Toward midday, officers appeared at ease, allowing citizens to mill about the edges of the cordon as neighborhood shops opened for business.
Rotting rubbish and boxes of unused petrol bombs littered the campus. On the edge of a dry fountain at its entrance lay a Pepe the frog stuffed toy, a mascot protesters have embraced as a symbol of their movement.

A worker repairs toll booths that were damaged during protests, at the Cross Harbour Tunnel near Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Nov, 23, 2019.Scores of construction workers worked at the mouth of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, closed for more than a week after it was first blockaded, to repair toll booths smashed by protesters and clear debris from approach roads.
The road tunnel links Hong Kong island to the Kowloon area.
Elections Sunday
The repairs got underway as a record 1,104 people gear up to run for 452 district council seats in elections Sunday.
A record 4.1 million Hong Kong people, from a population of 7.4 million, have enrolled to vote, spurred in part by registration campaigns during months of protests.
Young pro-democracy activists are now running in some of the seats that were once uncontested and dominated by pro-Beijing candidates.
The protests snowballed since June after years of resentment over what many residents see as Chinese meddling in freedoms promised to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Beijing has said it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula by which Hong Kong is governed. It denies meddling in the affairs of the Asian financial hub and accuses foreign governments of stirring up trouble.
Trump says he spoke to Xi
In an interview with Fox News Channel on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had told Chinese President Xi Jinping that crushing the protests would have “a tremendous negative impact” on efforts to end the two countries’ 16-month-long trade war.
“If it weren’t for me Hong Kong would have been obliterated in 14 minutes,” Trump said, without offering any evidence.
“He’s got a million soldiers standing outside of Hong Kong that aren’t going in only because I ask him, ‘Please don’t do it, you’ll be making a big mistake, it’s going to have a tremendous negative impact on the trade deal,’ and he wants to make a trade deal.”

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U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been a key witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Sondland was appointed to his post after donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. The practice of awarding ambassador positions to wealthy political supporters is not new to either party, but some lawmakers and presidential candidates say it is time to limit the practice. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
 

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Authorities in Jakarta say they have arrested 74 people on suspicion of terrorism and membership in the Jamaah Ansarud Daulah (JAD) group, which is affiliated with the Islamic State terror group, in a series of counterterrorism operations across Indonesia in the past week.
The suspects were apprehended during several anti-terror operations in 10 provinces after the Nov. 13 suicide bombing of a police station in Medan, in North Sumatra, National Police Chief Idham Azis said. The majority of the arrests, 30, were made in North Sumatra.
“In addition to revealing the identity of the suicide bombers, the Indonesian National Police has also arrested 74 suspects linked to a terror network in 10 regional areas within eight days of the incident,” Azis told lawmakers Wednesday during a meeting of Commission III of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia.

FILE – Members of police forensic team inspect the site of a bombing attack at the local police headquarters in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Nov. 13, 2019.The police headquarters attack in Medan last week reportedly injured six people and killed the bomber. Indonesian police did not immediately release the identity of the bomber, but said its investigations revealed that he had links to a local network of the JAD group.
In another incident last month, in Pandeglang regency of Banten province, a JAD-affiliated man stabbed chief security minister Wiranto during a public gathering. Wiranto survived the attack, but the incident rang alarms in the country with President Joko Widodo, who ordered more security and a crackdown on JAD.
JAD a terrorist organization
JAD was founded in 2015 and was designated in 2017 as a terrorist organization by the United States for its connections to IS. Its leader, Aman Abdurrahman, was sentenced to death last year for masterminding terror attacks and helping set up a jihadi training camp in Aceh province.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Abdurrahman pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in early 2014 and served as the group’s main translator, disseminating information online from jail, including IS’s call for Muslims to kill Westerners indiscriminately. He acted as the de facto leader of IS supporters in Indonesia, and instructed associates to travel to Syria to join the IS jihadists.

FILE – Islamic cleric Aman Abdurrahman arrives at court ahead of his verdict in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 22, 2018, in this photo by Antara Foto.Focus on prevention
Despite the recent attacks by the group, police chief Azis said security forces have successfully reduced the terror attacks by 58% in the country, from 19 incidents in 2018 to eight this year. He added that police this year have arrested about 275 terrorism suspects in the country, many of whom he said have been radicalized through social media.
In a separate meeting with the Indonesian parliament Thursday, Suhardi Alius, the country’s National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief, said his government needs to focus on preventive measures in addition to using law enforcement in combatting terrorism and extremism.
Alius said BNPT, along with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, is working to provide counseling for inmates who hold terrorist views and to ensure extremist ideology is contained in the prisons.
“It has started with the revitalization of prisons on the counseling of terrorism prisoners based on classification, so that gradually the development of terrorist prisoners can be centralized and they no longer mix with regular inmates,” Alius added.
He said BNPT in 2016 submitted a list of 600 former terrorists who had denounced their extremist ideology to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The former terror members will be counseled and fostered, instead of being exiled, he said.
Rise in radicalism
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, has witnessed a rise in radicalization over the years along with occasional terrorist attacks.
A string of bombings by al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiah in 2002 on the tourist island of Bali killed 202 people. The rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the Maute group, in neighboring Philippines, in later years drew hundreds of Indonesians to migrate abroad to join the extremist groups.
 

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Amazon.com Inc. Friday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the Pentagon’s award of an up to $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft Corp.
An Amazon spokesman said the company filed a complaint and supplemental motion for discovery. The filing was under seal. 
“The complaint and related filings contain source selection sensitive information, as well as AWS’s proprietary information, trade secrets, and confidential financial information, the public release of which would cause either party severe competitive harm,” Amazon said in a court document seeking a protective order. “The record in this bid protest likely will contain similarly sensitive information.”
Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper rejected any suggestion of bias in the Pentagon’s decision to award Microsoft the contract after Amazon announced plans to challenge it.
Amazon was considered a favorite for the contract, part of a broader digital modernization process of the Pentagon, before Microsoft emerged as the surprise winner. 
The company has previously said that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process. U.S. President Donald Trump has long criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos.

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 A U.S. university in the Western state of Idaho says it is no longer accepting students whose only health insurance is Medicaid, a federal health plan primarily for low-income people.
Brigham Young University-Idaho said it was now requiring students to buy a university-backed health plan, a move that could force some low-income students to drop out.
Students at the private university are required to have health insurance to be enrolled, a practice that is common at colleges across the country, both public and private. Previously, Medicaid qualified as adequate coverage at Brigham Young University-Idaho. Medicaid, funded by the U.S. government, is a health insurance plan for low-income and disabled people.
Brigham Young University is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church.
Students’ options
Following the university’s change in policy, students covered by Medicaid will now have to either buy another health insurance plan or enroll in a university-sponsored plan. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the university health plans are run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and cost $536 per semester for an individual or $2,130 for a family.
A statement from the university explained its reasoning for the decision: “Due to the health care needs of thousands of students enrolled annually on the campus of BYU-Idaho, it would be impractical for the local medical community and infrastructure to support them with only Medicaid coverage.”
Last year, Idaho passed an expansion of Medicaid in which families and individuals who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level would be eligible to receive Medicaid. That was an increase from the previous coverage, which topped out at 100% of the poverty level. The law goes into effect in January.
Local health care providers told media outlets that they were fully prepared to handle the care of new Medicaid patients and said they were not consulted by university officials. Grand Peaks Medical and Dental CEO Lori Sessions told EastIdahoNews.com that her clinic has been working to expand its offering “in anticipation of the influx of patients that Medicaid expansion could possibly bring.”
Protest planned
Thousands of Brigham Young students have signed a petition asking the university to reverse its position. Students say they are planning a sit-in Monday outside the offices of the school’s executives.
Brigham Young University’s main campus in Provo, Utah, has not changed its health insurance policy and still allows students insured only by Medicaid to attend.

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The U.N. envoy for Yemen said Friday that there has been a substantial decrease in violence in key areas of the war-wracked country.
“In the last two weeks, the rate has dramatically reduced: There were reportedly almost 80% fewer airstrikes nationwide than in the two weeks prior,” U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. “In recent weeks, there have been entire 48-hour periods without airstrikes for the first time since the conflict began.”
Griffiths said the number of security incidents in the vital port city of Hodeidah have dropped by 40%, and since five joint observation posts were created along front lines, incidents are down 80%.

FILE – An oil tanker docks at the port of Hodeidah, Yemen, Oct. 17, 2019.“Indeed, for several days in a row, there were no incidents in the city at all,” Griffiths told the council via a video link from Amman, Jordan.
He also noted that missile and drone attacks by Houthi rebels on neighboring Saudi Arabia have stopped for the past two months.
The move toward a de-escalation is the first good news in months for Yemen, which has fought famine and cholera and a collapsing economy.
Saudi Arabia began bombing Houthi rebels in support of the Yemeni government in March 2015. Since then, the U.N. human rights office estimates that more than 7,000 civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 injured — the majority from airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition. Thousands more have died from the effects of hunger, disease and a lack of access to medical care.
“Efforts to de-escalate violence are holding,” envoy Griffiths said. “I hope we will soon be able to build upon this achievement.”
He commended leaders in Yemen, saying, “They are doing the right thing.”
Power sharing 
Earlier this month in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi signed a power-sharing agreement with the Southern Transitional Council, which is seeking self-rule for southern Yemen. The deal averted a potential splintering of the country and provides for the government’s return to the southern city of Aden.

FILE – Saudi forces stand guard during the arrival of Yemen’s Prime Minister in Aden, Nov. 18, 2019.“The prospect of a breakup of the state was real and frankly terrifying,” Griffiths told the council. He said he hopes this breakthrough can be a catalyst for further progress toward a wider political settlement.
Yemen’s U.N. ambassador welcomed the Riyadh agreement and called for its full implementation.
“The agreement would usher in a new era of stability and security in Yemen,” Ambassador Abdullah al-Saadi said. He said the prime minister and the cabinet returned this week to the temporary capital, Aden.
Al-Saadi criticized the slow implementation of the Stockholm agreement, however, which is nearly one year old. “It is important to reflect on the reasons for such a delay and exert pressure on the spoilers,” al-Saadi said of the first phase of agreements made between the government and rebels.
For its part, the U.N. Security Council reaffirmed its strong support for Griffiths’ efforts to bring the parties together in an inclusive political process. “The council really hopes momentum can be put behind that,” the council president, British Ambassador Karen Pierce, told reporters after the meeting.

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U.S. House Democrats’ public impeachment inquiry hearings provided new details on allegations President Donald Trump pushed Ukraine’s president to investigate domestic political rival Joe Biden and his son. But as lawmakers draft the articles of impeachment for an expected vote before the end of the year, Republicans and Democrats remain deeply split over impeachment. VOA congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on where the impeachment inquiry heads next.

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An attorney assisting Gambia with its lawsuit against Myanmar alleging state-sponsored genocide at the U.N.’s top court said Thursday that he was confident that the West African nation would win the case based on copious, strong evidence of army atrocities against the Muslim Rohingyas. 
“The evidence is plentiful,” Paul Reichler, an attorney at Foley Hoag LLC in Washington, told Radio Free Asia’s Myanmar service. He spoke a day after the Myanmar government announced that State Counselor and Foreign Affairs Minister Aung San Suu Kyi would lead a team in defending the country at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands. 
“There are many, many fact-finding reports by U.N. missions, by special rapporteurs, by human rights organizations,” Reichler said. 
“There is satellite photography, and there are many, many statements by officials and army personnel from Myanmar, which all together show that the intention of the state of Myanmar has been to destroy the Rohingya as a group in whole or in part,” he said. 

FILE – An aerial view shows burned villages once inhabited by the Rohingya, seen from the Myanmar military helicopters that carried U.N. envoys to northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, May 1, 2018.“And we’re very confident that at the end of the day the evidence will be so compelling that the court will agree with The Gambia,” he said. 
In the lawsuit, filed 10 days ago, Muslim-majority Gambia accuses Myanmar of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention for the brutal military-led crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017 that left thousands dead and drove more than 740,000 across the border into Bangladesh. 
The West African country sued on behalf of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The first public hearings at the ICJ will be held Dec. 10-12. 
Myanmar has largely denied that its military was responsible for the violence in Rakhine state, which included indiscriminate killings, mass rape, torture and village burnings, and it has defended the crackdown as a legitimate counterinsurgency against a group of Muslim militants. 
The government has also dismissed credible evidence in numerous reports and satellite imagery that points to the atrocities, and it has claimed that the Rohingya burned down their own communities and blamed soldiers for the destruction. 
Myanmar’s powerful military and civilian-led government are together working with legal experts to take on the lawsuit, Agence France-Presse reported Thursday, quoting military spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun. 

FILE – Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi participates in the ASEAN-Japan summit in Nonthaburi, Thailand, Nov. 4, 2019.Separate cases pertaining to the persecution of the Rohingya have been filed at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and in an Argentine court, the latter of which names Aung San Suu Kyi and top military commanders deemed responsible for the atrocities. 
Myanmar has refused to cooperate with the ICC because the country is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the international court. 
On Thursday, Christine Schraner Burgener, the U.N.’s special envoy on Myanmar, welcomed the Southeast Asia country’s decision to defend itself before the ICJ. 
Burgener ended a 10-day mission to Myanmar on November 21, during which she met with government and military officials, diplomats, think tanks and U.N. agencies. 
“She welcomed the government’s position on the case filed by The Gambia to the International Court of Justice that, as a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide since 1956, Myanmar would take its international obligations seriously and would defend itself in front of the ICJ,” said a statement issued by the U.N.’s Myanmar office. 
State responsible for army actions 
Some of Myanmar’s top rights attorneys, meanwhile, weighed in on Aung San Suu Kyi’s decision to appear before the ICJ. 
“As foreign minister, it is reasonable that she will lead the defense team,” said Thein Than Oo, one of the founding members of the Myanmar Lawyers’ Network. 
“As a leader of the country, Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi has consistently denied the accusations. This charge is not just for human rights violations. She will be defending the genocide accusation. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has consistently denied that charge. I think she will deny it in the court, too. She has to.” 

FILE – A boy searches for useful items among the ashes of burned dwellings after a fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state near Sittwe, May 3, 2016.Kyee Myint, chairman of the Union Attorney and Legal Aid Association, noted that the state counselor’s team has very little time to prepare itself for the case. 
“We’ve got a very short period for preparation,” he said. “It’s less than 20 days. They should give us between three and six months, so that we have enough time to prepare the defense.” 
Kyee Myint also said that Aung San Suu Kyi should point out to the ICJ her limited authority over the military, as mandated in Myanmar’s constitution. 
“During the defense at the court, she should demonstrate her limited authorities over the military, showing them a copy of the 2008 constitution,” he said. “If she is willing to take the fall when the military is silent, that’s up to her.” 
But Reichler said that would provide no protection for Aung San Suu Kyi. 
“The army is part of the state. The civilian government is part of the state,” he said. 
“The state is responsible for the behavior of agents, of its organs, of its entities, of its ministries and of its military forces,” he added. 
“The idea that there are people in the government who oppose genocide … does not absolve the state of the responsibility that it has for operations of a different part of its government,” Reichler said. 
“The state is responsible whether the civilians support that genocide or not. It is the state that is carrying it out, whether it is the civilians or the military,” he said. 
Damage to country’s image 
Representatives from Myanmar’s political parties defended the government. 
Pyone Kathy Naing, a lawmaker from the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, said that the West has misunderstood the term “clearance operation,” referring to the action that Myanmar security forces took in Rohingya communities in Rakhine state in 2017 in response to deadly attacks by a Muslim militant group. 
“The term ‘clearance operation’ is misunderstood in the Western world,” she said. “The military’s clearance operations were to clear out the terrorists — not to drive out the [Muslims]. We need to clarify it.” 
“For the lawsuit, we need to counter strategically with a highly expert legal team,” she added. 
Soe Thein, an independent legislator and former minister of the president’s office agreed, saying, “We need to fight back with an expert international legal team — spending millions of dollars.” 
Oo Hla Saw, a lower-house lawmaker from the Arakan National Party (ANP), raised concern about the impact that the ICJ lawsuit would have on Myanmar. 
“This lawsuit’s impact on our society will be huge, especially because our country’s image will be damaged whether we win or lose, since we are accused of rights violations,” he said. 
“The second thing is economic impact,” he said. “We will be isolated. We might be sanctioned by large Western countries. Nobody can be sure, but the impact will be huge because Western countries and the OIC countries will be influencing these motives.” 
“This will be a very big problem for us,” he added. 
Reported by Ye Kaung Myint Maung, Khin Khin Ei, Nay Myo Htun, Thet Su Aung, Thiha Tun and Phyu Phyu Khaing for RFA’s Myanmar service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung and Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. 

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Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is making her first campaign hires in early voting Nevada, scooping up staffers who worked for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign.
Klobuchar’s campaign announced Friday the Minnesota senator had hired Marina Negroponte to serve as state director and Cameron Miller to serve as Nevada political director. Both held similar roles in the state for O’Rourke’s campaign, which ended this month.
Negroponte helped organize the Hispanic community for the civil rights nonprofit We Are All Human Foundation and spent a decade working in international development for the United Nations.
Miller has worked on several state legislative campaigns in Nevada.
The state is third in line to vote next year on the Democratic presidential field.
Klobuchar has been working to build momentum after strong performances in the last two debates.
 

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Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger and independent journalist Pham Chi Dung, a prominent government critic and VOA contributor, in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday.
In a statement posted online, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security accused Dung of “dangerous” anti-state actions, including “fabricating, storing, and disseminating information, as well as other materials opposing the Vietnamese government.”
State media said Dung carried out “anti-regime activities such as producing anti-state articles, [and] cooperating with foreign media.”
Dung, 53, president of the outlawed Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), could face a jail sentence of five to 20 years if found guilty, local media said.
Dung, who writes regularly on VOA’s Vietnamese Blog, faced similar allegations in 2012.
IJAVN vice president Nguyen Tuong Thuy told VOA that Dung’s arrest was “a dangerous move to silence dissenting voices and repress freedom of speech in Vietnam.”
IJAVN’s website has been blocked since Dung’s arrest. Thuy said he fears “the arrest will have a big impact on the group’s activities and its members,” as authorities continue to investigate the group.
Dung established IJAVN as a “civil society organization,” July 4, 2014, and has said that America’s Independence Day inspired him to create a platform to advocate for freedom of the press, freedom of expression and democracy.

A screenshot taken Nov. 22, 2019, shows Pham Chi Dung’s Facebook cover photo.“The arrest of Pham Chi Dung is the continuation of an intensified crackdown against political activists and bloggers in Vietnam,” freelancer Duong Van Thai, a Vietnamese political asylum seeker in Thailand and a former state-run media reporter in Vietnam, told VOA. “The arrest showed Hanoi’s desire to exercise greater control over the freedom of speech.”
Nguyen Tuong Thuy noted that Dung’s criticism of the government had intensified of late, likely triggering his arrest.
“He has written more aggressively in a stronger style, but Pham Chi Dung is still the same!” Thuy said
Dung resigned from the Communist Party in 2013, ending 20 years of membership. In the years since, Reporters Without Borders has lauded him as an “information hero.” In addition to VOA, he has contributed to NBC News and Nikkei Asian Review.
The Vietnamese government continues to ban independent or privately-owned media outlets. It exerts strict control over radio and TV stations and printed publications, and routinely block access to politically sensitive websites.
 

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President Donald Trump on Friday promoted a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, a day after a former White House adviser called it a “fictional narrative” and said it played into Russia’s hands.
Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and said he was trying to root out corruption in the Eastern European nation when he withheld aid over the summer. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the center of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly $400 million.
He also worked to undercut witnesses at the hearings, including the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump recalled from her post in Kyiv. The president called her an “Obama person” and claimed without evidence that she didn’t want his picture to hang on the walls of the embassy.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, in the second public impeachment hearing.“There are a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like,” he said, adding that he asked why administration officials were being so kind to her. “‘Well, sir, she’s a woman. We have to be nice,’ ” he said they told him. Without providing details, Trump said he viewed her differently. “She’s very tough. I heard bad things,” he said.
He repeated his assertion that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s network in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime, a theory his own advisers have dismissed.
“They gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian,” Trump said. “I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”
The president in the wide-ranging interview also claimed that he knows the identity of the whistleblower who filed the formal complaint that spurred the impeachment inquiry.
“You know who the whistleblower is. So do I,” Trump told the hosts.
Trump said he didn’t believe House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., who has maintained that he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower.
“If he doesn’t, then he’s the only person in Washington who doesn’t,” Trump said.
Trump said he does not expect to be impeached, claiming Democrats have “absolutely nothing” incriminating, despite days of public testimony by witnesses who said Trump withheld aid from Ukraine to press the country to investigate his political rivals.
“I think it’s very hard to impeach you when they have absolutely nothing,” Trump said, adding that if the House did vote to impeach him, he would welcome a trial in the Senate.
Trump’s claim on Ukraine being behind the 2016 election interference has been discredited by intelligence agencies and his own advisers.
CrowdStrike, an internet security firm based in California, investigated the DNC hack in June 2016 and traced it to two groups of hackers connected to a Russian intelligence service – not Ukraine.
One version of the debunked theory holds that CrowdStrike is owned by a wealthy Ukrainian. In fact, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russian-born U.S. citizen who immigrated as a child and graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The president repeated his claim one day after Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser on the White House National Security Council, admonished Republicans for pushing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Former White House national security aide Fiona Hill, arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 21, 2019.“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill testified before the House impeachment inquiry panel. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Trump told “Fox & Friends” that “there was no quid pro quo,” in his efforts to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine.
The president’s assertion is at odds with sworn testimony by impeachment witnesses.
 

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment is expected to sharpen the battle lines in Israel’s already deadlocked political system and could test the loyalty of his right-wing allies, Israeli commentators said Friday.
                   
The serious corruption charges announced Thursday appear to have dashed already slim hopes for a unity government following September’s elections, paving the way for an unprecedented repeat vote in March, which will be the third in less than a year.
                   
In an angry speech late Thursday, Netanyahu lashed out at investigators and vowed to fight on in the face of an “attempted coup.”
                   
His main opponent, the centrist Blue and White party, called on him to “immediately resign” from all his Cabinet posts, citing a Supreme Court ruling that says indicted ministers cannot continue to hold office. Netanyahu also serves as minister of health, labor and Diaspora affairs, as well as acting minister of agriculture.
                   
He is not legally required to step down as prime minister, but Netanyahu faces heavy pressure to do so, and it is unclear whether an indicted politician could be given the mandate to form a new government. Netanyahu has already failed to form a majority coalition of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset after two hard-fought elections this year.
                   
“This will not be an election, it will be a civil war without arms,” columnist Amit Segal wrote in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper. “There is a broad constituency that believes what Netanyahu said yesterday, but it is far from being enough for anything close to victory.”
                   

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Can Netanyahu Hold Onto Power After Indictment?Writing in the same newspaper, Sima Kadmon compared Netanyahu to the Roman emperor Nero, saying “he will stand and watch as the country burns.”
                   
Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust stemming from three long-running corruption cases. He has denied any wrongdoing and accused the media, courts and law enforcement of waging a “witch hunt” against him.
                   
The corruption charges will weigh heavily on Netanyahu’s Likud party in future elections, but it’s unclear if any senior member has the support or willingness to replace him.
                   
Hours before the indictment was announced, Gideon Saar, a senior Likud member, said a party primary should be held ahead of any future elections and that he would compete. But there are several other leading members of the party, and it’s unclear if any one of them can gain enough support to topple its longtime leader.
                   
Some Likud members expressed support for Netanyahu after the indictment was announced, but most have remained mum.
                   
“If the attorney general should indeed announce that Netanyahu can no longer form a government, will (Likud members) stand up openly and work to form an alternative government? For that to happen, they will have to sit together in one room and trust each other, which is something that has not happened for the past decade,” Segal wrote.
                  
Nevertheless, he concluded, “the great threat to Netanyahu is now posed from within.”
                   
Amid all the political machinations, Netanyahu will have to prepare to go on trial. He can battle the charges, or he might seek a plea bargain in which he agrees to resign in return for avoiding jail time or hefty fines. Either process could drag on for months.
                   
Netanyahu is Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was forced to resign a decade ago ahead of a corruption indictment that later sent him to prison for 16 months.
                   
“We’ve got a number of political and legal processes which are all going to be happening now simultaneously,” Anshel Pfeffer, a Haaretz columnist and the author of a biography of Netanyahu, told The Associated Press.
                   
 “It’s impossible to predict which one will bring about the end of Netanyahu’s career,” he said. “All these things are going ahead now, but slowly.”

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