By Vakkas Dogantekin
ANKARA (AA) - A Democratic U.S. senator from the state of California and also a 2020 presidential hopeful, urged social media platform Twitter to suspend the account of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Speaking on CNN late Tuesday, Kamala Harris directly challenged the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that holds freedom of speech sacred.
"I, frankly, think that based on... all we've seen him do before, including attacking members of Congress, that he, frankly, should be -- his Twitter account -- should be suspended," she said.
Harris' undemocratic request came on the same day another Democratic lawmaker, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, said Trump should be "imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement".
"As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!" Trump tweeted amid escalating tone of voice from the Democrats and what he calls the "Fake News" media.
Harris retweeted Trump's coup tweet with a comment and asked Twitter's founder Jack Dorsey to take action.
"Hey, @jack. Time to do something about this," Harris said, asking him to censor a free speech tool the president uses to talk directly to more than 65 million of his followers.
- What is happening?
The House of Representatives began its impeachment investigation into Trump last week. At issue is a July 25 phone conversation the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump repeatedly pressed Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over claims of corruption.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, maintaining his call with Zelensky was "perfect".
Joe Biden, while serving as vice president to former president Barack Obama, pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma Group, the Ukrainian national gas company whose board accepted son Biden in 2014 as a member despite a lack of significant previous experience in the field.
While father Biden was managing the Ukraine policy of the U.S. administration, son Biden made millions of dollars in Ukraine and elsewhere, according to media reports.
Burisma was mired in allegations of corruption, which led Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to launch an investigation into the company.
Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loans from Ukraine if they did not fire the prosecutor, a controversial move the Republicans call an abuse of power especially when it is the U.S. Congress that makes budgetary decisions in line with U.S. National interests.
Threat from a senior U.S. official worked, the prosecutor was fired, and the investigation was dropped six months later.
Shokin told John Solomon of political Hills magazine last week that before he was fired, his office was investigating Burisma, and he was making plans to ask Hunter Biden “about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm.”
“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified to a European court in 2016.
Joe Biden talked about his overtures with the Ukrainian officials during an event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018, more than a year before he announced his bid to run for president.
"I remember going over and convincing our team, others, to convince that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev [Ukraine's capital]. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from [Petro] Poroshenko [former president of Ukraine] and from [Arseniy] Yatsenyuk [former prime minister of Ukraine] that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t," Biden said and continued.
"So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Son of a b***h. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time," Biden added.