President Trump told House Republicans that he made his now infamous phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry — a call Trump claimed he didn’t even want to make.

Behind the scenes: Trump made these comments during a conference call with House members on Friday, according to 3 sources on the call.

Per the sources, Trump rattled off the same things he has been saying publicly — that his call with Zelensky was "perfect"and he did nothing wrong.

But he then threw Perry into the mix and said something to the effect of: "Not a lot of people know this but, I didn't even want to make the call. The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to. Something about an LNG [liquified natural gas] plant," one source said, recalling the president's comments. 2 other sources confirmed the first source's recollection.

WASHINGTON — “None of us know when a medical emergency will affect us,” Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in a tweet from Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center on Wednesday, hours after the 78-year-old Democratic candidate for president experienced one.

Mr. Sanders’s emergency — the sudden onset of chest pain known as angina — is one that thousands of other Americans experience each year. Mr. Sanders’s discomfort occurred at a campaign event on Tuesday night. Because it signaled acute heart trouble, the senator went to the hospital where doctors implanted two stents in one of the coronary arteries that nourish the heart.

Doctors often release patients who undergo such procedures in a day or two. Mr. Sanders remains in the hospital, and his campaign has closely guarded pertinent details about his heart condition and treatment, raising questions about the extent of his health issues.

Among other things, Mr. Sanders has not disclosed whether blood and electrocardiogram tests showed he had a heart attack. The senator and his campaign have not allowed reporters to interview his doctors, though advisers have said that Mr. Sanders would be able to appear in the next Democratic debate on Oct. 15.

Rioting anti-government protesters paralysed large swathes of Hong Kong with wanton destruction on Friday, hours after the city’s leader announced that a law against wearing masks would be imposed at midnight.

They vandalised and burned shops, bank outlets and metro stations, forced the closure of the city’s entire railway network and blocked roads, wearing masks in open defiance of the new law.

Police, who were expecting a backlash, were not seen at many flash points for hours as radical protesters went on the rampage.

Police began taking control later at night, firing tear gas at violent mobs on both sides of the harbour, from Wong Tai Sin, Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan to Causeway Bay and Aberdeen.

House Democrats are seeking documents from Vice President Mike Pence as part of their impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump and his conversation with the President of Ukraine.

The demand for documents came in a letter Friday from House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel and House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings. The Intelligence Committee has taken the lead on Democrats' impeachment inquiry.

"Pursuant to the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry, we are hereby requesting that you produce the documents set forth in the accompanying schedule by October 15, 2019," the chairmen wrote.

Rather than traveling to Warsaw, Poland, last month to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump decided to stay home to track the damage from Hurricane Dorian. In his place he sent Pence, whose face-to-face meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky now puts him at the heart of events that led to the impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives.

Sen. Mitt Romney on Friday denounced President Donald Trump for calling on China and Ukraine to investigate 2020 political rival Joe Biden, saying the president’s request is “wrong and appalling.”

The Utah Republican’s statement marks the strongest condemnation of the president from any Republican senator. Most members of the GOP have responded to the president’s China request with silence.

In a tweet, Romney said that “by all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” Romney further noted.

Author Marianne Williamson raised $3 million in the third quarter of 2019, her campaign announced Thursday.

The haul is a significant boost from the $1.5 million Williamson raised respectively in both the first and second quarters of 2019.

Williamson, however, has spent much of the money she has raised. Her campaign announced on Thursday that the author had just over $650,000 in the bank, a small bankroll considering Williamson has raised more than $6.1 million in 2019.

"It's the American people who decide which candidates have a voice that needs to be heard, not the gatekeepers," said Patricia Ewing, Williamson's campaign manager. "We are in awe of our supporters, past and present, and appreciate the growing enthusiasm and support that enables us to continue competing in the early states."

CLINTON, Iowa — On the day House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry of President Trump last week, Pete Buttigieg was being grilled by Iowa voters on other subjects: how to loosen the grip of the rich on government, how to restore science to policymaking, how to reduce child poverty.

At an event in eastern Iowa, a woman rose to say that her four adult children were “stuck” in life, unable to afford what she had in the 1980s when a $10-an-hour job paid for rent, utilities and an annual vacation.

“How can the federal government help our young people that want to do what’s right and to get to those things that their parents worked so hard for?” the voter asked.

This is the conversation Mr. Buttigieg wants to have. Boasting a huge financial war chest but struggling in the polls, Mr. Buttigieg is now staking his presidential candidacy on Iowa, and particularly on connecting with rural white voters who want to talk about personal concerns more than impeachment. In doing so, Mr. Buttigieg is also trying to show how Democrats can win back counties that flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in 2016 — there are more of them in Iowa than any other state — by focusing, he said, on “the things that are going to affect folks’ lives in a concrete way.”