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Republican Lawmakers Disrupt Closed-Door Impeachment Hearing

HeadlineOct 24, 2019

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers stormed a closed congressional hearing room Wednesday, disrupting the House impeachment investigation and preventing a Pentagon official from testifying for five hours. The protest violated House rules — including a ban on cellphones and other electronic devices inside a room known as the SCIF, or sensitive compartmented information facility.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to lash out at the impeachment investigation. On Wednesday, he blasted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor as a “Never Trumper,” one day after Taylor told Congress that Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine in a bid to force its leaders to incriminate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden. In an angry tirade on Twitter, Trump warned of a growing number of Republican critics, tweeting, “Watch out for them, they are human scum!”

This comes as The New York Times is reporting top Ukrainian officials were told in early August about the delay of military aid, undercutting one of President Trump’s main arguments that he hadn’t engaged in a quid pro quo. And the Associated Press reports that in May Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spent hours with his advisers discussing Trump’s pressure campaign to force him to investigate Joe Biden. Later in the broadcast, we’ll go to Capitol Hill for the latest on the impeachment investigation.

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