Live updates: President to head to North Carolina as fallout continues from his Senate trial - The Washington Post

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President Trump is scheduled to head to North Carolina on Friday on his first trip out of Washington since being acquitted in a Senate trial on impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress that centered on his conduct toward Ukraine.

An economic event will offer a glimpse of how much Trump plans to continue to focus on his impeachment while fallout from the trial continues, including reports that he is preparing to push out a national security official who testified against him. At events Thursday, Trump railed against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), the only Republican who voted to convict him.

The crux of the case against Trump was the allegation that he withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president.

●With trial over, Trump returns to political maelstrom.

●Trump lambastes his critics as he moves to target perceived enemies over impeachment.

●Trump celebrates end of impeachment with angry, raw and vindictive 62-minute White House rant.

How the Senate voted|Key documents from the impeachment process| The full Trump-Ukraine timeline

9:15 AM: Gingrich says Trump should not pay any attention to Pelosi, his ‘mortal enemy’

Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, offered some advice Friday to Trump on how to handle the current occupant of that job in the wake of his acquittal.

“My advice to the president would be really simple,” Gingrich said. “Don’t pay any attention to Pelosi, because she’s your mortal enemy. . . . There’s not much point in the president wasting time with her.”

During an appearance on Fox News, Gingrich also chided Pelosi for cutting short Trump’s introduction at the State of the Union, noting that he introduced President Bill Clinton four times during his tenure as speaker, saying each time that it was “my distinct honor and personal privilege” to do so. Cutting those words “was almost like a declaration of war,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich, who served as speaker from January 1995 to January 1999, oversaw Clinton’s 1998 impeachment.

Gingrich was also critical of House Democrats for considering issuing a subpoena to former national security adviser John Bolton, who was not called as a witness in the Senate trail.

“That’s kind of like they want to shoot at Trump as often as they can until they get finally him, and they’d like him to be nice while they’re doing,” Gringrich said.

By: John Wagner

9:00 AM: Sen. Paul draws ethics complaint for naming alleged whistleblower

An expert on whistleblowers is filing a complaint against Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) with the Senate Ethics Committee, due to the senator publicizing the name of the alleged whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry.

In a letter to Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, Tom Mueller, the author of a book on the history of whistleblowing, alleges that Paul “engaged in improper conduct that is unethical and unbecoming of a Senator.”

During the Senate trial last week, Paul submitted a question that included the name of the alleged whistleblower. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. refused to read it, saying, “The presiding officer declines to read the question.”

Paul subsequently publicized the name to the media and later read his question on the Senate floor during a period reserved for speeches on impeachment from senators. Paul said he was not seeking to out the whistleblower but was naming someone whose actions were key to understanding the origins of the inquiry.

“Senator Paul’s conduct was especially corrosive because it occurred during one of the most solemn of the constitutional tasks bestowed upon the upper chamber, a time when the Senate was sitting as a court of presidential impeachment for only the third time in this nation’s history,” Mueller says in his complaint. “But even if this had been an ordinary trial in a conventional court, the behavior would have been contemptuous.”

Paul’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

By: John Wagner

7:45 AM: Trump shares tweet questioning job of national security aide

As he continued to share tweets from political allies, Trump included one in which Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, questioned why Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council aide who testified during House impeachment hearings, remained on the job.

Trump is reportedly preparing to push Vindman out of his position at the White House as early as Friday and reassign him to a position at the Defense Department.

In a tweet that Trump retweeted, Fitton included a television clip from last year in which he questioned why Vindman was still working for the NSC.

“I don’t know how we can expect the president to have any trust in this person’s work,” Fitton said during an appearance on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network. “He should be nowhere near any policymaking body for the government.”

During public testimony before the House in November, Vindman testified to the concerns he had after hearing a July phone call in which Trump pressed the leader of Ukraine for investigations that could benefit him politically.

By: John Wagner

7:35 PM: Joe Walsh, Republican who called Trump ‘unfit’ for office, ends presidential bid

Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman who announced a primary challenge to Trump last year, has ended his long-shot bid for the Republican nomination, he said on CNN Friday morning.

Walsh, a tea party activist who hosted a conservative talk radio show, once supported Trump, but he became one of the most prominent Republican voices to break from the president shortly after Trump took office.

Walsh launched his campaign last August, declaring Trump “unfit” for office and saying conservatives should have an alternative in 2020. Over more than five months of running for the GOP nomination, however, Walsh grew convinced Republicans who supported Trump were part of a “cult” and under a “spell,” he wrote in an op-ed Thursday for The Washington Post.