New report says Trump admitted he was pressured to kill Soleimani by Senators over impeachment

As the fallout from the Trump administration’s reckless assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani continues to rain down and the death toll continues to grow, their justification for the questionably legal killing has grown thinner by the day. While the Trump team and their sycophants in the media have relentlessly tried to push the narrative that our intelligence had evidence that Soleimani was orchestrating an “imminent” attack against the United States, their inability to give any kind of details about this mysterious and heinous attack has led many to believe that the assassination was done for impeachment reasons rather than national security reasons.

Those suspicions were confirmed on Friday afternoon when the Wall Street Journal reported that the President had told his associates that he had to “deal with” Solemiani in order to buy their goodwill and support in his upcoming impeachment trial. Given the way that the President and their team cannot keep their story straight over what exactly the beloved Iranian general was planning, it’s almost certain at this point that the President of the United States has now abused both our military aid and our military itself in order to advance his personal political agenda.

The Trump team’s story began falling apart earlier this week after Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) stormed out of an intelligence briefing complaining that the Trump team told him not to publicly dissent or question the administration’s story and that when pushed for justification was told “I’m sure we could think of something.”

McConnell admitted coordinating impeachment with Trump. Add your name to demand he recuse himself from the trial!

Having apparently thought of something, President Trump announced at a rally last night that Qassem Soleimani was plotting to attack a U.S. embassy, then predictably inflated that number to four embassies in a discussion with FOX white supremacist host Laura Ingraham.

But when questioned for details on these accusations, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted this morning that they “don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where” these attacks would take but assured the nation that “it was real.”

Given the Trump administration’s proclivity for lying about literally anything whenever it suits them, their refusal to give any more details about this supposed attacks, and now the allegations that the president himself admitted he murdered Soleimani for political purposes, it’s safe to deduce that the White House is lying about the embassy attack threat.

Speaker Pelosi announced this morning that she was preparing to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate for withholding military aid from Ukraine in a harebrained scheme to coerce them into holding sham investigations into 2020 challenger Joe Biden, but it appears that she should hold off and draft up one more.

The death of Qassem Soleimani will send shockwaves through the Middle East and already hundreds have died because of the President’s actions; for him to have put our national security at risk, to have put the lives of our troops in danger just so he could buy favor with Senators is an appalling abuse of his war powers, and he must be held accountable for it.

Original reporting by Michael C. Bender, Michael R. Gordon, Gordon Lubold and Warren P. Strobel at the Wall Street Journal.

 

Colin Taylor

Managing Editor

Colin Taylor is the managing editor of the Washington Press. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice, equality, and universal health care in America.